


Harry Potter, Self-Insert

by 15Redstones



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Magic and Science, POV First Person, Self-Insert, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 23
Words: 43,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22559575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/15Redstones/pseuds/15Redstones
Summary: I am a fanfic writer, and now I'm suddenly Harry Potter.How did I get here? No idea.Is there a way back? Probably not.Do I have a chance against that genocidal maniac trying to kill me? Maybe.
Comments: 44
Kudos: 216
Collections: A Collection of Beloved Inserts, Best of the time travel and SI/OCs





	1. Awakening

**Chapter 1: Awakening**

_r/WritingPrompts: [EU] You wake up as Harry Potter, but with all your current knowledge. Write how you beat Voldemort._

Neat idea. Maybe I'll write that story. Later. I got a class test tomorrow and I'll need a good night's sleep.

-HP-HP-HP-

Something's wrong.

Terribly wrong.

This isn't my bedroom.

This is... is this a cupboard?

Why does my body feel all wrong?

And why do I have this strange feeling in my forehead?

Fuck.

I am Harry Potter.

How the bloody hell did this happen?

I feel like I should panic right now.

Or maybe not?

No, I somehow managed to end up in a fictional universe, in the body of a fictional kid, with the piece of a fictional murderous madman stuck in my head. My fictional relatives hate me, I'm going to go to a fictional school where I'm going to be attacked more times than I can count by fictional enemies including, but not limited to a mountain troll, a murderous plant. a possessed teacher, a tree, a group of giant talking spiders, a murdersnake, a diary, soul-sucking demons, a dragon, merpeople, a rat-man, the murderous madman and soul-sucking demons again and then I'm going to be dragged into a freaking civil war.

And I'm probably never going to see my actual family again.

Panicking is totally appropriate in this situation.

-HP-HP-HP-

Okay, I think I panicked enough. The situation is pretty bad. but not as bad as I immediately thought.

For the record, I'm still pretty sure I won't see my family again. In canon Harry got moved out of the cupboard after the first Hogwarts letter in 1991 so the current time is before that. My real parents, if they exist in this alternate reality where magic exists, haven't even met each other.

I'm also pretty sure that I'm in trouble. Canon Harry nearly dies a ton of times and I don't think I can rely on plot armor.

But I, in contrast to clueless canon Harry, know what's coming. Somewhat. It's been a while since I've read the books and my head-canon is filled with tropes from fanfiction where I have no idea if certain things are canon or not.

I also happen to be 18 years old and I have completed like 95% of my secondary education before I somehow ended up here, so I know a bit of science. That might help. Although I probably should avoid acting like Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres because I really don't want to have to deal with HPMoR's Super-Quirrelmort. I also don't want to be an arrogant asshole.

I'm also pretty sure that I can do magic. Actual, real magic.

So, it's not as helpless as I thought.

That's something, I guess.


	2. Chatting with the Neighbor

**Chapter 2: Chatting with the Neighbor**

Remember what I said about my situation not being as bad as I thought?

Turns out I was wrong. Terribly naive and wrong. My life is absolutely horrible, for one reason that I haven't accounted for at all.

Petunia Dursley.

I swear, that woman hates me. The moment she noticed I wasn't the completely obedient servant she locked in the cupboard yesterday, she started screaming at me for being a worthless freak.

On the positive side, I did my first accidental magic. I memorized the feeling I got when I exploded the ceiling light as best as I could. Getting my magic under control is something I need to do ASAP.

On the negative side, Vernon (who didn't really care about me before) immediately started beating me up and now I'm locked in the cupboard again.

-HP-HP-HP-

They had me locked in the cupboard until evening and then gave me some dinner leftovers. The next few days were a bit better but I had to do a ton of chores. Isn't child labor illegal? I guess it is, but since I wasn't British in my original life I have absolutely no clue about the legal system here.

Luckily they didn't talk to me enough to notice that I developed a rather strange German/American accent overnight. They did notice, however, that I seemed to have forgotten how to do my chores correctly. and that I seemed to be unusually clumsy. The result of all your body parts being way smaller than you're used to. I totally understand how Tonks must be feeling all the time.

I really should find a way to get out of here, but I fear that if I try to run away Dumbledore will just put me back and Obliviate my memories of the escape attempt.

Unless... I could prevent him from finding out. I'd need to convince his Spy to help me though.

-HP-HP-HP-

Finally! The Dursleys are with Dudley at the playground and won't be back for a while, and they allowed me to stay in the garden unsupervised, as long as I wasn't going to annoy the neighbors. Well, I'm about to break that rule, but I have no intention of letting them know. So here I am, walking over to the fence behind which Ms. Figg was watering her Tulips.

"I know you're here to keep an eye on me, Ms. Figg. My relatives won't be back for another hour or so, we can talk."

The startled Squib nearly dropped the watering can. "Excuse me, what did you say, Boy?"

"I know I'm not normal. I noticed a while ago that you're trying to keep an eye on me, probably because of my... abilities."

"How...how did you find out?"

I knew from reading Harry Potter, but I can't let her know that.

"Just a guess. So I take it you can tell me more about what my relatives call my freakishness? I know it makes strange things happen, and they said my parents had it too. Were they superheroes like in the comics? Did they die fighting a supervillain? I never believed the car crash story! And who's behind you spying on me? The MI6? Are you a secret agent like James Bond?"

"No, no! It's not freakishness, your parents weren't comicbook superheroes, and I'm not a spy like that! You got it all wrong!"

"Really?"

"Yes. Listen, Harry, I'm not really supposed to tell you, but you're a wizard. You can do magic. You can't control it yet, that's why it always causes a mess. Your parents, Lily and James, died fighting a dark wizard. You survived, and Dumbledore wanted you to grow up like a normal child, which is why you're here."

"So you're a witch?"

"No, I'm a Squib", she sighed. "I'm from a magic family, and I can see magical things, but I can't do magic myself."

"Oh. So, who's this Dumb Eldor? Why did he want me to grow up here? It's awful!"

"I know, and I tried to convince him otherwise, but he wants you safe. The thing is, when the dark wizard who killed your parents tried to kill you, he couldn't do it for some reason and disappeared. Nobody knows why, although I guess Dumbledore has some theories. But because you made the dark wizard disappear, you're famous in the magical world."

I do my best clueless-8-year-old impression: "Isn't being famous a good thing?"

"Dumbledore said he wanted you to grow up without fame, and I understand that. But much more importantly, Dumbledore thinks the dark wizard could come back, and then he would attack you. He says you're safe with your family."

"But... if a wizard attacks I'm not safe! I'm the only one with magic here and I don't know anything about it!"

"Dumbledore says there are magical protections on the house of your family, but they only work if you're actually there. So I'm sorry, but you can't be safe anywhere else."

Yeah, my mother's protection and everything. Not that it protects me from Vernon trying to beat the magic out of me.

"Can you teach me magic? If the evil wizard comes after me when I'm at school I will need magic to defend myself!"

"While you're at school... I didn't think of that. Yes, you should probably know enough to defend yourself. The thing is, there's laws against kids doing magic without a teacher, and I can't teach you anyways because I can't do magic."

"Petunia doesn't give me any pocket money, otherwise we could maybe hire a teacher to teach me magic!"

"Money isn't an issue, but I don't think we can hire a teacher, Dumbledore wants as few people as possible to know you're here. Safety and all."

"Couldn't you find someone you trust and ask them to become a teacher? Maybe someone who was a good friend to my parents?"

"I could, but I don't think Dumbledore would approve. He's probably going to be mad enough at me for telling you about magic. He insisted that I should just observe and not do anything."

"Then don't tell that stupid Dumb Eldor!"

Apparently she didn't take my insult to the great Dumbledore that well, as she's almost screaming at me.

"Don't talk about Dumbledore like that, he knows what he's doing! He's the best wizard in the world and the Supreme Mugwump and the Chief Warlock and the Headmaster of Hogwarts, the magic school!"

"Ah, I see. He wants to be the one who teaches me about magic!"

"DON'T BE STUPID! HE JUST WANTS THE BEST FOR YOU!"

Yeah, right. Of course he wants the best for me, dropping me off at the Dursley's doorstep in the middle of the night. Of course it's no problem that I grow up in an abusive household as long as it's for The Greater Good™.

"WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT BOTHERING THE NEIGHBORS FREAK!"

Oh great, Petunia is back.


	3. Werewolf, Magic, Justice

**Chapter 3: Werewolf, Magic, Justice**

A few days after my relatives caught me annoying the neighbors, Petunia had a very sudden change of mind and demanded that I spend the day over at Ms. Figg's. When I walked into her cat-filled living room, she had a guest.

"Hello Harry, I see my compulsion charm to get your Aunt to send you over worked. I'm Remus Lupin, your new Tutor for magic. I was a friend of your father. You look just like him, but you have your mother's eyes."

Looks like that's the first thing anyone who knew my parents will tell me.

"Uh, hi Mr. Lupin. Does Dumb Eldor know?"

"His name is Dumbledore, and Arabella said she thinks it's better if he doesn't know for now. We'll tell him later depending on how this goes. And please, call me Remus."

"Okay. Remus. So you're here to teach me magic?"

"We'll see. You won't be going to Hogwarts for another three years and I haven't registered you as my student yet so you can't do wanded magic, and you don't have a wand anyway. We'll just tell you everything you need to know about the magical world and the basics of what I could teach you now."

-HP-HP-HP-

A few hours later, we had discussed most of what I already knew about wizarding society, plus a bunch of things that I didn't remember reading in the books. We agreed that I should learn basic defensive magic in case I get attacked.

A few days later we did a very short visit to Diagon Alley, apparating right in front of Ollivander's, getting my wand (I mentioned that I felt like Holly and Phoenix feather would be nice, which sped things up a lot) and apparating back to Ms. Figg's. I'm pretty sure nobody recognized me with my dyed hair and the baseball cap covering my scar, and Remus later went back alone to get my books.

Over the next weeks we met at Ms. Figg's every day and I learned the basics of magic. Remus did some compulsion charms to convince Petunia to have Ms. Figg as my babysitter every day. All in all the charms made the Dursley's a lot more bearable, although we couldn't overdo it or the other neighbors might have noticed something.

When Remus wasn't there, as he had a job due to me not being able to pay him from my Gringotts vault without Dumbledore noticing, I was poring over the books he brought me. After years of being pretty good in Physics and Chemistry, the whole Theory of Magic aspect turned out to be pretty easy, especially the books written for 11 year olds which I was reading as an 8 year old 18 year old.

The first step of my plan had worked beautifully and I was doing significant progress preparing myself for my destiny as the Boy-Who-Lived, Chosen One of the Prophecy. Not that anyone suspected that I knew about that.

-HP-HP-HP-

"Remus, tell me more about you and my father."

"I think I already told you we were close friends."

"That was one of the first things you said to me!"

"Oh, yes. We had a little group. Me, your father, Peter Pettigrew and.. Sirius Black."

"What happened?"

"We met on the train ride to Hogwarts. For seven years, we were the closest friends you can imagine and made the school unsafe. Then, in the war against You-Know-Who, we fought together. When your parents had you, they went into hiding. Then... I'm not sure I should tell you that."

"Tell me! Please!"

"Sirius. he... I don't know why, he was always the closest to your father, but he betrayed us. He told You-Know-Who where your parents were hiding, and after that, after your parents were dead and You-Know-Who gone and the war was basically over, he killed Peter as well. He's in prison now."

"Oh.."

-HP-HP-HP-

"Ms. Figg? Where's Remus?"

"He's at home, ill. He's had a rough night."

Of course, full moon. Maybe I can use the opportunity.

"Can I write him a letter?"

"Of course, here's paper. Just put the envelope addressed to him inside another one addressed to the wizarding post office and they'll owl it to him."

She didn't notice that the envelope inside wasn't addressed to Remus.

_Dear Mr. Alastor Moody,_

_When was visiting the Weasley family recently I noticed that the pet rat of Percy Weasley is an Animagus in disguise. I looked it up and there's no rat Animagus registered in Britain, which means that they are indeed harboring a criminal. I don't think anyone noticed my revealing spell so you should be able to catch them off guard. I would have brought the rat to the Aurors immediately if I could have, but I didn't have very good Defense OWLs so I thought it would be best to leave it to the Professionals._

_Good luck catching the criminal._

_Mr. X_

-HP-HP-HP-

"Harry! You won't believe what happened!"

"Remus! You're better! Tell me. what did happen?"

"They found Peter! Peter Pettigrew!"

"But... he's dead?"

"Apparently, he faked his death. It turns out he was the traitor all along! Sirius was innocent the entire time!"

"No way!"

"He got released from Prison just a few hours ago, he's now at St. Mungo's recovering. I just visited him."

"How's he?"

"Pretty awful after years in Azkaban, but better than I expected. Do you think I should tell him that I'm teaching you?"

"Well, if he was really innocent and my father's best friend all along... sure! I'd love to meet him!"

-HP-HP-HP-

"You were right. Moony. He really looks looks like James, but he does have Lily's eyes."

I was right. Looks like that's the first thing anyone who knew my parents will tell me.

"Uh... hello Sirius. I'm glad to meet you."

"Harry! The last time I saw you you were a baby! You've grown a lot!"

"Uh, thanks?"

"How's life with your Aunt and Uncle? I met Lily's sister once, and Lily often mentioned they didn't get along very well."

"To be honest, its awful. She really doesn't like me and constantly lets me know it."

"Come on, she can't be that bad."

"Well, since Remus started using compulsion charms on her she doesn't lock me in my cupboard any more, but I still only get hand-me-downs and stuff.."

"CUPBOARD?"

Looks like casually dropping that bombshell had quite the effect. All three adults were staring at me.

Remus was the first to speak up. "I knew she didn't like you, but you never told me anything about a cupboard."

"It's just where I sleep. It's the locking me up part she always used to do."

Ms. Figg looked like she was about to kill someone. "Merlin, if I'd known that, I would have been a lot more insistent to Dumbledore about getting you away from them."

"Well, it's true that I need to be safe. I don't think that unless one of you had a house with really good magical protection I could live anywhere else safely."

Sirius seemed to have gotten the hint. "Well, I didn't really intend to come back there ever again. but I think I have a place that might work..."


	4. A Grim Old Place

**Chapter 4: A Grim Old Place**

Number 12, Grimmauld Place was a grim old place. Don't blame me for the terrible pun, blame JK Rowling. But still, it was better than Privet Drive.

"If only my poor old mistress knew what her blood traitor son was doing, bringing halfbloods and werewolves into the house of her fathers..."

Right, Kreacher. But I'm not supposed to know about house-elves, am I?

"Wow, who is that?"

"That's Kreacher, Harry, the family house elf. Don't listen to what he's saying, he's just parroting my mother's bigoted beliefs."

"Can I talk to him a bit? I've never met an elf before."

"Sure, why not?"

"In private?"

"Okay. Kreacher, could you take Harry upstairs and talk to him while I work on these muggle adoption papers? And I order you not to insult him!"

One _crack_ of apparition later, I and Kreacher were in an empty room upstairs.

"Okay Kreacher, I'd like you to never tell this to anyone, but: I know how to destroy Regulus's locket."

"How does young boy Harry know about the locket? Kreacher never told anyone but... did Master Regulus survive? Kreacher left him alone!"

"I'm so sorry to disappoint you, but I'm pretty sure Regulus didn't make it. I know through other means, and I really can't tell you. But I know what it is. Did Regulus ever tell you?"

"No, Master Regulus only ordered Kreacher to destroy it. Kreacher tried, but Kreacher couldn't. All the magic Kreacher tried bounced off! Kreacher thinks the way to destroy is from the inside, but Kreacher couldn't open it!"

"I think I could open it, but there's a nasty trap on the inside, and without a way to immediately destroy it we'd just get ourselves in danger. To destroy it we'd need something as potent as basilisk venom or fiendfyre, but we can't have anyone else know about this, alright? I promise that as soon as I find a way I'll destroy it, but until then you need to keep it safe and you can't tell anyone!"

"Kreacher will do so, Master Regulus ordered him not to tell, and he won't tell anyone about young Harry knowing either!"

"Good, now, can I ask for a little favour? I'd like it if you could maybe help cleaning the house a bit and making it more livable, okay? Nobody's lived here for three years and it's a bit too grim and dark for my taste. Oh, and be nice to my friends please. I'll tell you if I find out more about the locket."

"Kreacher will do so. Kreacher is so happy. Finally, a chance for Kreacher to fulfill Master Regulus's last command!"

-HP-HP-HP-

"I have no idea what you did, Harry, but I know you did something."

"What?"

"Kreacher and I have hated each other for as long as I can remember, but now he's completely different. When I asked him to redecorate this room a bit, he didn't complain about me defacing the house of my ancestors like I expected, instead he seemed to be more than happy to do it. He even was nice to me! I didn't think that was possible! What did you do?"

"I was just nice to him. Also, I gave him the third room on the second floor."

"Why did you give him a room?"

"I was a bit uncomfortable about anyone living in a cupboard."

"Ah, right."

-HP-HP-HP-

So, that's how I escaped from the Dursleys. Grimmauld Place was getting less grim every day, Kreacher and Sirius were making an effort being nice to each other, Remus visited almost daily to continue my lessons (now also including potions), and Ms. Figg visited from time to time to discuss what to tell Dumbledore. The Dursleys had been more than happy to sign the adoption papers and nobody in Little Whinging missed me. The second step of my plan seemed to work out as well. Time for step number three.

"Hey Sirius, I really like it here, it's much better than with the Dursleys, but it's a bit lonely without a friend of my age."

I'm actually much closer to his age than he thinks, but he doesn't know that of course.

"Harry, you know that I can't exactly let you go and meet kids from other wizarding families. If Dumbledore finds out, I don't know what he'll do."

"Maybe I could get muggle friends who don't know I'm famous? I could go to muggle school again."

"I thought you didn't like it there at all?"

"Only because Dudley convinced everyone to bully me. I'm sure if I went to a different school it'd be okay. I'd be safe if nobody knows who I really am and if you apparate me there not even someone who knows I live here could follow me."

"Alright. I don't know much about muggle schools though."

"I can go to the library with Remus tomorrow and look up which schools are available around here."

-HP-HP-HP-

"Are you sure you want to go to that specific school? It's not exactly the nearest one."

"I've got a good feeling about it. I think I'll find friends there."


	5. Back to school

**Chapter 5: Back to school**

So, I'm mentally 18 years old, I've been out of primary school for nearly 8 years, and now I'm back, in the body of an 8 year old. It was all a bit awkward but I managed. It's important to leave a good first impression after all.

"Hello everyone! Today is a very exciting day as we have a new student! Say hello!"

"Uh... hello? I'm Harry Black."

"Harry here just transferred to our school. He's skipped two grades, but as he's not the only kid to do so in this class I am sure he'll be fine. You can find a seat and sit down now, Harry."

So I looked around the room and chose the empty place next to the only other child of my age, a girl with very bushy hair.

"Hi, I'm Harry."

"Hermione."

Bingo.

-HP-HP-HP-

The schoolwork back in fourth grade was ridiculously easy. It also seemed to be that way for Hermione, even though she skipped grades without time traveling. So far, at least. She's really smart for her age. I guess the rumor of canon her being written as the self-insert of JK Rowling is at least partially true. I probably should tell her about magic sometime soon but I didn't get a good opportunity to do so yet.

But hey, the first day of school isn't even over yet.

"Hey, you! You're the new one, right?"

Hermione tensed up as a rather large boy approached us while we were talking during the break.

"I am. And who are you?"

"I'm Tyler. And if I can offer you a bit of advice: Stay away from Hermione. She's weird."

"In what way?"

"She's a complete know-it-all. And there are rumors that she... isn't normal."

Sounds like there was an incident with accidental magic at school earlier.

"And what are you?"

"Excuse me?"

"From what I can see, she's the best performing child in our class, perhaps the entire school. You, on the other hand, aren't. But instead of striving to improve yourself to keep up, you take the easy way out and belittle her accomplishments. You, dear Tyler, seem to be a bully. And if I can offer you a bit of advice: Stay away from both of us."

"You... you're even worse than her!"

"Considering that what you seem to see as her bad trait is her intelligence, I'll take that as a compliment."

Being 18 mentally is a bit of an unfair advantage. Tyler turned around and walked away to his group of friends, and Hermione next to me seemed completely surprised that someone was backing her up.

"Thanks, Harry."

"Does he bully you often?"

"Not really. He mostly just avoids me."

"And makes it difficult for you to find friends?"

"Pretty much."

"I had a bully like that at my old school. Dudley Dursley. Made sure that nobody was my friend. Hunted me around. Cheated by copying me and accusing me of copying him. Called me a Freak, because I'm obviously not normal. And you know what the worst part was?"

"What?"

"He's my cousin. I've been living with the Dursleys, my Aunt and Uncle, ever since my parents died, and they've only been encouraging him."

"That's awful."

"It was. Luckily my Godfather adopted me a while ago and that's behind me now."

"Have you ever had a friend?"

I had, in my old life. Harry Potter didn't. And I don't know how to classify Remus and Sirius.

"Not really."

"Me neither."

"Do you want to?"

"You mean. if I want you as a friend?"

"Yeah, that's what I meant."

"Sure!"

-HP-HP-HP-

School was progressing well. I obviously knew everything already, but made a honest effort to only be as good as Hermione, which still meant top of the class.

Outside of school my magic classes went pretty well as well. I only really learnt the basics of most Hogwarts classes, since I would take those later, and instead spent most of my time learning dueling (in case I was attacked) and obscure magics such as Occlumency (can't have Dumbledore or Snape reading my mind), wandless magic (it's apparently best taught young when you're not too used to channeling magic through a wand) and I managed to convince Sirius to teach me the Animagus transformation too.

Eventually. For now I was just barely able to do an _Expelliarmus,_ I knew the theory of Occlumency but without a Legilimens I trusted I couldn't practice much, and I was able to wandlessly levitate a paper clip a centimeter above my hand. But for an 8 year old it's something.

-HP-HP-HP-

"Hey Harry, what are you reading there?"

"A book on Occlumency. Really fascinating."

"Never heard of it. What is it?"

"It's a meditative technique to clear your mind and arrange your memories."

"So, it's supposed to make you smarter? Aren't you already smart enough?"

"No, it's supposed to prevent people from reading your mind."

"Really?"

"It supposedly works much better than tinfoil hats."

"Oh Harry, you've got a weird sense of humor."

-HP-HP-HP-

"Oh Harry, I didn't know you had a dog!"

"It's my Godfather's. Padfoot, that's Hermione. Hermione, that's Padfoot."

"Hello Padfoot!"

"Woof!"

-HP-HP-HP-

"Hey Hermione, what are you reading there?"

"Oh hi Harry. It's _Matilda_ by Roald Dahl. It's really good,"

"Oh yeah, I've read that ages ago. I really liked it. Used to be one of my favorites."

"Really? It just came out!"

Dang it. Completely forgot about the time travel. Well, it's probably best if I'm honest with her.

"Yeah, you see, I'm actually a time traveler from 2019, and I'm a bit older than I appear, so that's why I remember reading about it years ago."

"Oh Harry, just admit you didn't read it and tried to be talkative."

Okay, maybe that wasn't the best idea.

"Okay, I admit. So, what's it about?"

"It's about this girl, Matilda, who likes to read a lot and she's good at school, but nobody believes her and the headmistress hates her, so she learns to move things with her mind and gets the headmistress to resign by making it look like there's a ghost in the school."

"She kinda sounds a lot like you, if I think about it."

"What, because I like to read?"

"No, because you can move things with your mind, of course."

She flinched a bit. I guess she did once move something with her mind.

"Oh Harry!"

"I bet you could if you tried!"

-HP-HP-HP-

Okay, I've made a huge mistake. I completely forgot that I'm in the body of an 8 year old, and not a very strong or large 8 year old at that.

And now I've got a group of 10 year olds ganging up on me.

"What do you want, Tyler."

"I want to teach you a lesson about why you shouldn't have tried to out-freak the freak girl."

Oh great. Now I'm the Freak again. I could magic my way out, but using my wand would let the Ministry know I'm here, and my wandless magic... I can levitate a coin now.

"Scared, Black?"

Last name basis? Is Tyler trying to be Muggle Malfoy?

"Just annoyed."

One of the other boys took a look at the book I had been reading.

"What's that? Matilda? A girl's book?"

"Give it back."

"Oh, you want me to give it back?"

"It would be better for your own wellbeing if you gave it back. I borrowed it from Hermione and she doesn't like it when her things go missing."

"So you're threatening us... with her?"

I'm threatening them with the girl that has the potential to set her teacher's robes on fire, brew illegal potions and come up with a truly nasty magical contract, but they obviously don't know that.

"I'm informing you that it would be better for you to give it back and apologize."

I did notice that she's standing right behind them and she's looking rather angry,

"Like that's going to happen, Black. You're delusional. Of course you are. You are just as abnormally freaky as her."

"DON'T CALL HIM A FREAK AND GIVE THAT BACK!"


	6. A lot to explain

**Chapter 6: A lot to explain**

"DON'T CALL HIM A FREAK AND GIVE THAT BACK!"

Suddenly, all three of the bullies stumbled to the ground, as if someone shoved them rather aggressively, and the book flew right into Hermione's hand. The bullies all ran away as soon as they got back on their feet. Hermione herself looked completely shocked and nearly burst into tears. I have to remind myself that she's still 8 years old and has no clue what just happened.

"I did that... Now you know why they call me abnormal, now you'll call me abnormal too, and it's all my fault, all my fault.."

"Hermione, calm down. I'd never call you abnormal."

"Really? But... you saw what I did. That's not normal."

"I guess Matilda isn't normal either?"

"You knew. You said I could move things with my mind. How did you.."

"The Dursleys started calling me a freak after I made one of Dudley's toys fly around."

"You can move things with your mind too?"

"And much more. I once made the ceiling light explode when my Aunt was screaming at me."

"Why would you explode the ceiling light?"

"I didn't want to, it did just happen. These things always happened under strong emotions."

"Yeah, for me too. This time it was quite a bit more controlled than usual. The other times, things did just happen. This time, it did what I really wanted it to do."

Wow, controlling her accidental magic at age 8? She's even better than I thought. I take out a coin from my pocket and, after checking that no other children are seeing it, levitate it for a few seconds.

"You're controlling it!"

"It's difficult. Accidental magic is always spontaneous. Controlled magic takes a lot of concentration."

"Magic? Is that what it is?"

"Yes. There's about ten thousand people capable of magic in Britain. We're pretty rare."

"Ten thousand? There's thousands of people using magic and no one knows?"

"That's because they're hiding it. Magic can be used to hide magic after all. There's international laws on it. You can tell your parents but not anyone else."

"Really? I can't tell people?"

She seemed quite disappointed.

"I couldn't tell you either until I saw you doing it. I was pretty sure before but all I could legally do was drop hints."

"Like Matilda. But how did you know before?"

"I had a feeling about it. The way everyone treated you like they treated me at my old school."

"Hm. So if I'm one of them why didn't these magicals tell me?"

"They would have told you in a few years. Don't blame me, the Ministry of Magic is full of idiots who think it's best to leave children like you clueless until right before sending them to magical school."

"Did they tell you?"

"The Dursleys left me clueless even though they knew, they didn't like magic at all, but my Godfather's a wizard."

"A wizard?"

"He's a man who can use magic. Female magic users are called witches. I see I have a lot to explain."

-HP-HP-HP-

Sirius was very surprised when I told him that I invited the Grangers over to Grimmauld Place. While he spent the afternoon explaining the details of the Wizarding World, Hogwarts education and Wizarding politics to Hermione's parents, Remus taught Hermione a bit of magic. By the evening, she managed to cast _Lumos_ with my wand and we agreed to meet more often to learn more magic together. Really, she insisted on visiting Grimmauld more often after she discovered the Black Family library. I also may have caused S.P.E.W. to be started a few years early after Hermione ran into Kreacher.

Step three of my plan to prepare myself for Hogwarts successful.

-HP-HP-HP-

_Dear Mr. Alastor Moody,_

_I have found out that Barty Crouch is keeping a Death Eater in his home under the Imperius. Catch him like you caught Pettigrew after my previous letter._

_Good luck._

_Mr. X_

With both Wormtail and Crouch Jr. caught, that should prevent me from having to fight a dragon in the Triwizard. I really wasn't looking forward to that.

-HP-HP-HP-

"Harry, I have to ask you something."

"Yes, Hermione?"

"I've been reading. In _Modern Magical History_ , it says that the Dark Lord Voldemort disappeared after he tried to kill a boy named Harry Potter. In _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts_ , it says that the Boy-Who-Lived mysteriously disappeared, nobody knows where he is. And in _Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century_ , there's a picture of baby Harry Potter with his parents, and the man standing next to James Potter, looks a lot like your father, Sirius Black."

I probably should have told her earlier about that.

"You're Harry Potter, aren't you? The Harry Potter? Not Harry Black?"

"Yes. Well, technically I’m Harry Black in the muggle world now, Sirius adopted me."

"And you never bothered to tell me that you're the boy who defeated Voldemort?"

"I never knew how to tell you without sounding arrogant. 'Hey, I'm super famous'. Anyway, I can't even remember doing anything. It was probably some kind of trap set by my parents."

"And the books all say that you're supposed to have a scar shaped like a lightning bolt from the reflected Killing Curse."

"I had a plastic surgeon cover that up months ago. Otherwise every wizard I meet would recognize me and there would be no way I could visit Diagon Alley without everyone asking questions. There might still be some followers of the Dark Lord around, so I'm also safer when I'm not attracting too much attention."

To be quite honest, I'm mostly worried about Dumbledore at the moment. I've got no idea what he's going to do when he finds out that Hogwarts won't be my first real home as he planned. He’s _probably_ not a manipulative mastermind, but I can’t know for sure. Death Eaters probably won’t appear until in a few years.

-HP-HP-HP-

The first time I and Hermione went shopping in Diagon went pretty smoothly. I had been there before, but only by apparating to Ollivanders for my wand, so I hadn’t really seen most of it. This time I used hair dye to prevent anyone from recognizing me looking like mini-James, and in combination with using “Harold” as my name I was able to appear in public without getting mobbed by fans.

Visiting Gringotts was interesting. Hermione’s parents exchanged some pounds for galleons. Meanwhile, I took a look at what my parents left me.

I walked in as Harold Black, owner of my wand, my clothes and not much else, and after some inheritance test rituals I walked out as Lord Harold Harry James Potter-Gryffindor-Peverell-Black, owner of thirteen vaults containing somewhat overpowered enchanted items, 1.2872E23 Galleons, significant shares in half of Diagon, 37.25% of Hogwarts, three family manors, seven vacation homes in various countries as well as 5 seats in the Wizengamot. Oh, and the goblins removed my Horcrux and destroyed the one in the Lestrange vault.

I wish.

In reality I got one vault containing one pile of money.

It’s a pretty neat pile of money, but that’s it. Not a “trust vault” with additional family vaults, no properties, no items, no investments.

It turns out that the middle of a civil war isn’t the best time to do business so my parents kinda sold most of what they had to finance the Order, and everything they had except from the pile of gold in the vault was in their house in Godric’s Hollow, which blew up, got declared a national monument and is now owned by the Ministry.

Sirius’s finances aren’t much better, to be honest. The Blacks have been going downhill for ages and most of their fortune had been used to finance the war, this time the other side. All that’s left is Grimmauld, a slightly larger pile of money and some enchanted jewelry. With anti-theft and self-polishing charms, not anything particularly useful.

Well, looks like Sirius will have to sue the Ministry for reparations or get a job so that we can continue with employing Remus.

After Gringotts, everything went more or less as expected.

Hermione absolutely _loved_ the bookstore. I found it pretty interesting, too. Lots of information that wasn’t in the HP books, so I bought a ton.

Hermione got her wand. Dragon heartstring and vine, same as in canon if I remember correctly. No changes there.

I also got some more potions ingredients. You never know when you might need a bezoar or some boomslang skin.

All in all, the trip was a success. I might leave the safety of Grimmauld more often now.

-HP-HP-HP-

Progress update: I can now wandlessly levitate a book from the bookshelf into my hand. No summoning yet, I have to manually steer it. Hermione is very jealous that I can spend the entire day reading without getting up and is catching up quickly.

The teachers at Hogwarts will be in for a surprise.


	7. The magic of the mind and time(zones)

**Chapter 7: The magic of the mind and time(zones)**

I'm hitting dead ends.

For the past few months, I've practiced magic, both with and without a wand. In theory, wandless is superior, but incredibly difficult. In practice, I've found that it's actually easier when you've not gotten used to use a wand for everything, but it still requires far more concentration - which is why I've only learnt levitation and nothing else - and because the magic isn't focused it takes insane amounts of magical power to do anything big, power that I simply don't have.

So while I can levitate small to mid-sized objects, It's physically impossible for me to do much more until I'm older. Damn it. At least I can levitate my wand from my pocket into my hand, that's pretty useful and I'm doing it so much that I've gotten really good at it. If only me using that wand was as successful.

There's my main roadblock, you see: I've got a feeling my wand doesn't like me. When I sneaked into Diagon Alley to buy it, it seemed to fit perfectly with my magic, but the longer I have it the more it resists me. Ollivander said that the wand chooses the wizard, and this one seemed to have chosen Harry Potter - and now it's noticing that I'm not really him.

It's frustrating because the other wands in Ollivanders shop didn't respond to me at all, and now it's slowing everything I planned down. I'm still way ahead canon Harry, but far from the overpowered godlike Harry that I had planned to become.

My other projects aren't much more successful either. I talked Sirius and Remus to teach me the Animagus transformation, since every second fanfic ever has that, but my form turned out to be an octopus. A very clever animal, but unfortunately completely useless in 99% of all situations. Why couldn't it be a bird? Flight would be amazing! Or a cat? I could've sneaked around Hogwarts with nobody noticing! Even a beetle like Rita Skeeter would be useful. I guess I just have bad luck. So no, I'm not putting the extra time into learning to transform, I got better things to do.

Like hunting horcruxes. Oh wait, I actually hit a dead end there too. The Gaunt shack was easy to find, but it's surrounded by so much potentially deadly magic that I'm not going to get within a mile of it without Dumbledore at my side, and I have no idea how or when I'm going to tell him about it.

The only thing I'm actually making progress with at the moment is reading magical theory, especially the theory of soul magic. The Black Family Library has quite a few books too dark even for the restricted section of the Hogwarts library, so I've been spending as much time as possible trying to understand the soul piece stuck in my forehead. I really need to find a way to get rid of it that doesn't involve an _Avada Kedavra_ in my face, and until then I need to block it's effect on me.

Given the need to protect my secret, I need to learn Occlumency anyways.

-HP-HP-HP-

"Hey, Hermione, could you do me a favor?"

"Sure, what is it?"

"Can you keep a secret? A really big and important one?"

"Okay?"

"I don't really know how to say this, but... I'm not really the real Harry Potter. I know this sound crazy, but I'm actually a teenager from the future and I somehow ended up in this body."

"That... explains a lot."

"You don't seem very surprised?"

"Well, compared to all the other things you've told and shown me, being a time traveler isn't the most crazy thing about you. You are always acting strange and way too mature and you know everything in school."

"I actually wanted to learn to be more childish at school, but I kinda forgot about it when we started spending all our time together to learn more magic..."

"How is the future?"

"Not too different... I wasn't a wizard so I don't really know much about that apart from what I've read in books... apart from that, it was alright. Everyone had a pocket-sized computer with instant access to more knowledge and misinformation than ever before, a billionaire reality TV star somehow became US President, oh and there was a sports car floating somewhere in space between Earth and Mars because why not."

"Seems.. crazy."

" Yeah... so, about the favor. I need your help to learn Occlumency so that I can keep this secret."

"The memory technique? Why would you... oh, you weren't joking about the mind reading, were you?"

"Well yeah, it's a rare skill, but there are wizards who can do it, Voldemort certainly can, so I need to learn to keep him and anyone else out, and I need your help with that."

"If there are mind-reading wizards, I definitely want to keep them out too. What do you want my help for?"

"I learned the theory, I can give you the books I used. But for practice I need someone to try to break into my mind."

"So you want me to do that? I'm still completely new to magic! Why not Remus?"

"Can you imagine his reaction if he finds out I'm not really James' son? Or that of Sirius? He still hasn’t fully recovered from Azkaban, and I doubt he’ll ever be mature."

"Fair point."

-HP-HP-HP-

I'm really hoping my plan worked. If it did, I helped hundreds of people around the world. If not... Remus probably had a rather interesting adventure.

The fire turned green and a very happy Remus Lupin caught Sirius by surprise.

"Remus, I've never seen you so happy after a full moon since our first adventure together back in fifth year, what is it?"

"It worked! Harry, it worked! Oh Sirius, you won't believe it, he totally solved my furry little problem!"

Sirius seemed totally flabbergasted. "Don't tell me he just cured lycanthropy."

"Well, it's not really a cure, but I thought of a way to block the full moon. Remus told me that werewolves tried hiding underground before, but a few hundred meters of rock never was enough. That got me thinking... what about an entire planet?"

"Planet?"

"The Earth," Remus explained. "I spent the night - or day - camping in New Zealand. The portkey was quite expensive but it was so worth it. I skipped the entire night."

"But why would... ooh. Time zones. Of course. Remus, why did we never think of this?"

"I honestly don't know. Brilliant ideas always seem so simple afterwards. Harry, that was one amazing idea of yours. I've already started writing the article for _Magical Discoveries Monthly,_ the next full moon the entire world's population of werewolves will try this - you'll have your name in the history books in no time. The second time, that is."

It'll feel good to be famous for something I actually did. I still can't believe nobody tried this before - but that's probably just J.K. Rowling's storytelling.

-HP-HP-HP-

“Hey Hermione, how about we just go to your home and watch some TV today?”

“Sure, why not?”

This was kind of spontaneous, but I just remembered something about today’s date.

“Harry, why did you turn on the news channel?”

“Just wait for it.”

“Are you waiting for something special to happen?”

“Pretty much.”

“Something you know from the future?”

“Yes.”

“Harry, what’s going to happen?”

I pointed to the TV where the news just started broadcasting live from Germany.

“That.”

“What the.. MUM, DAD, THE BERLIN WALL JUST FELL!”

“It did, right on time as I remembered it. The Soviet Union should follow in about two years.”

“So you really are a time traveler… Just how much do you know about the future?”

“Not much, this was a complete accident that I didn’t prepare for at all. I just know the major historical events. I don’t think I’ll be able to predict anything post-2000 though, by then I’ll probably have changed something major. Butterfly effect and all.”

-HP-HP-HP-

"Alright, let's do this. Legilimency test number one. No Occlumency on my side, you just try to find out what I'm thinking."

"Harry, are you sure you want me to do this?"

"I am. Ready?"

"Ready. _Legilimens._ "

I wasn’t using any Occlumency at all, but I could still feel the rather clumsy legilimency spell in my mind. It was a decent first attempt though. I focused on the memory I wanted her to see as good as I could recall it.

 _"Finite._ Are you alright?"

"Yeah. How much did you see?"

"A bit. Who was that and why was he never going to give me up or let me down? And stop laughing like a maniac!"


	8. To Hogwarts!

**Chapter 8: To Hogwarts!**

"Are you nervous?"

"A bit. I mean, we've been preparing for this for almost two years, but still... I spent all the time hiding from the wizarding world and now I'll be around tons of people who will be interested in me because of what happened ten years ago. I don't really know how I should handle it."

"I'm sure it'll be alright. It's not like you never left Grimmauld."

"Yeah, but at the muggle school nobody knew who I was, except for you. We were just the two nerdy kids."

"We also went to Diagon Alley dozens of times. It won't be much different at Hogwarts."

"I'm not going to use a disguise at Hogwarts. It's different."

"Alright, it's a bit different. But I'm sure that after the first week or so everyone will find out that you're just another student."

"Hermione, you're literally the only person apart from me who knows that I am not another normal student."

"Calm down, it'll be fine."

I sure hope so. I spent most of my time at the muggle school trying to learn to behave like a young kid again, but I'm really not sure how the other students are going to react. Although my main concern is that I'll be in the same castle as Voldemort - and I still have no idea how I'm going to tell Dumbledore.

"Excuse me, have you seen my toad?"

Oh, Neville Longbottom is making his first appearance.

"We haven't seen a toad, but we can help finding it. What's its name?"

"Uh, he's called Trevor."

 _"Point me_ Trevor. Looks like he's in the front of the train."

"How do you know the Point Me Spell? Isn't that a third year one?"

"We studied ahead a bit."

"Okay, thanks for the help. I'm Neville Longbottom, by the way. I totally forgot to introduce myself."

"Hermione Granger"

"Harry Potter"

"The Harry Potter?"

"Yes. Before this turns awkward, could we go and find Trevor?"

-HP-HP-HP-

"So, which house do you think you'll get sorted into?"

"We had a private tutor and studied ahead for almost two years. There's absolutely no chance we won't end up in Ravenclaw."

"I originally thought Gryffindor was the best," Hermione interjected. "Because Dumbledore was a Gryffindor. But then I heard that Ravenclaw has its own small library, and we'd both prefer to avoid that stupid Gryffindor/Slytherin rivalry. What about you?"

"My parents were Gryffindors, so my grandmother wants me there, but I don't know if I'm good enough. I'm probably going to end up in Hufflepuff."

"Don't worry. It'll be alright. Even if you become a Hufflepuff, I've heard it's the best house for Herbology."

"How did you know I always liked plants?"

"Just a guess. And if you really want Gryffindor, just ask for it. The sorting process takes wishes into account."

-HP-HP-HP-

"Is it true? They're saying all down the train that Harry Potter's in this compartment. So it's you, is it?"

Oh great. Malfoy's appearance.

"Yes."

Hermione must have noticed my reaction to Malfoy, because she blinked three times. I took the signal and cast a quick _Legilimens_ at her. In front of her Occlumency barrier was her question:

" _Do you know them? Any information from the future?"_

I pushed my answer in front of my own Occlumency barrier as I felt her legilimency.

_"Yes. Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle. Their fathers were Death Eaters who claimed Imperius. They mostly got away with it because Malfoy's father is rich and bribed half the Ministry. All three will definitely be in Slytherin and would support Voldemort if I don't stop his return."_

Meanwhile, Draco Malfoy continued his speech almost copied from _Philosopher's Stone._

"You'll soon find out some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there."

"You mean the sort that turned the house of the cunning into the house of the muggle-haters?"

"Excuse me?"

"Pureblood traditionally Slytherin families like yours that supported Voldemort and bribed their way out?"

"What? My father was under the Imperius! He will hear about this!"

"I'm sure he will. Tell him that if he ever needs his master vanquished again, he can just send me an owl."

"You'll regret that, Potter!"

Well, the sooner Lucius Malfoy plants the diary the sooner I can get that behind me, so I don't think antagonizing the Malfoys is going to be something I will regret. Unless I end up in his house.

"That was awesome," Neville exclaimed after Malfoy and his goons left. "Grandma always complains about how Malfoy bribes everyone in the Wizengamot, she'll love hearing how you called him out like that!"

-HP-HP-HP-

The rest of the train ride was relatively uneventful. I didn't meet Ron or any of the other Weasleys, but Neville turned out to be very friendly after he got over his constant fear of failure.

"Yeh'll get yer firs' sigh o' Hogwarts in a sec", Hagrid called over his shoulder exactly like in _Philosopher's Stone,_ "jus' round this bend here."

Woah. It's at least twice as impressive than the Warner Brothers movie version.

-HP-HP-HP-

The Great Hall was truly awe-inspiring when I entered it the first time. The moment was only ruined by me noticing Quirrel. The bad guy. Sitting right there. But I couldn’t do anything yet, so I had to pretend not to notice anything.

"Granger, Hermione"

"RAVENCLAW!"

Oh look, a canon divergence. Guess that happens when studying ahead for years.

The other students got sorted, I didn’t really pay attention to most of them. Neville ended up in Gryffindor after spending almost a minute under the hat.

"Potter, Harry"

Oh great, everyone stared at me. I seriously hope that they'll calm down after a while, because I can't stand attention like that. Oh well, time to talk with the hat. I was interested in what it had to say about me.

"Oh my. You're from the future? And not even this universe, but a universe where I am a piece of fiction? I must say, your mind is the most interesting I've seen in quite some time!"

"Feel free to examine it, I know you can't reveal any secrets anyway. Just put me in Ravenclaw in the end, ok?"

"Why Ravenclaw? You're studious and eager to learn, sure, but according to your own knowledge aren't you supposed to be in Gryffindor? And how you dealt with Pettigrew... quite Slytherin! And I see quite some ambition!"

"First, you already put Hermione in Ravenclaw and not in Gryffindor, so you already messed up the timeline, might as well put us in the same house like you're supposed to. Second, I'm just not the run-into-danger Gryffindor type like canon Harry. Third, Slytherin would be a very bad choice since half the house has some family in prison because of me vanquishing their lord. Fourth, I don't want to be involved in the Gryffindor/Slytherin rivalry, that's just a waste of time. Fifth, I certainly do have ambitions but one of these ambitions is to recover the lost diadem of Ravenclaw, and I need to see the statue in the Ravenclaw common room to find out how it looks like. Sixth, I studied ahead for years, and studying ahead is what Ravenclaws are known for the most. Seventh, I just gave you a prepared list of reasons why I should be in Ravenclaw. A Gryffindor would've put you on without a plan and a Slytherin would've tried to trick you."

"Alright, alright, I get it... RAVENCLAW!"

As I made my way to the cheering Ravenclaw table, Hermione blinked at me again.

_"Why did he take so long? He put me into Ravenclaw pretty much immediately."_

_"He tried to put me into Slytherin, so I had to talk him out of that. Me in Slytherin, could you believe it?"_

_"Just after you antagonized Malfoy? I can see how that would cause trouble. Good to see you convinced him otherwise."_

Oh my, I love the ability to hold conversations with eye-contact. Took us forever to figure that out, but it was so worth it, even if Hermione will probably refuse to use it to cheat in exams.

“ _Hey! I heard that!”_

Well, that’s one issue of constantly using mental connections.


	9. Am I in trouble?

**Chapter 9: Am I in trouble?**

We had just been welcomed to Ravenclaw Tower and I had barely started unpacking when Flitwick told me that the Headmaster wanted to see me in his office.

To be honest, I have to idea how to handle the situation. I don’t think that he’s a manipulative evil mastermind, but I can’t be sure and he _did_ leave me with the Dursleys and never checked on me. Either way he’s far from the perfect person the wizarding public believes him to be, if a group of schoolkids have to save the day not just once, but _seven years in a row,_ the adults in charge aren’t as responsible as they should be.

Well, here goes nothing.

“Hello, Harry.”

Dumbledore seemed nervous and a bit sad, almost resigned.

“Am I in trouble?”

“No. I think I should probably offer an apology. I should have made sure that you had been alright at the Dursleys. I knew that it wouldn’t be perfect, but had I known just how bad it was I’d have done something. When I found out, it was too late and you were unreachable.”

“How did you find out? Just out of curiosity.”

“About a week after you left Privet Drive forever, I noticed that Arabella’s latest letter seemed... off. When I visited her, she was furious at me. I was shocked to find out just how bad the situation had been and I am truly sorry for that. When I asked where you had gone, all she said was that you were in a safe place with loving family. I contemplated tracking you but decided against it. I didn’t hear from you again until you showed up here today, with one exception.”

He pulled out a copy of _Magical Discoveries Monthly_ from about one and a half years back. The one with the article about the Potter-Lupin method.

“I have to say, was quite positively surprised. A very counterintuitive method, but successful where many others have failed. Congratulations.”

“Oh, I completely forgot about that… Remus wrote the article. I just had the idea.”

“I take it that Remus Lupin and Sirius Black were who you lived with the past two years?”

“Yes, I had originally gotten Ms. Figg to hire Remus as a tutor so I could learn some magic in advance. When Sirius got out of prison he adopted me and we went to live at 12 Grimmauld Place. That place has quite the security. Technically I’m Harry Black in the muggle world, but that’s just to make it more difficult for anyone to track down the Boy-Who-Lived through muggle paperwork.”

Dumbledore looked surprised.

“That’s quite paranoid, isn’t it?”

“Well, since I didn’t have those mysterious protections you put on Privet Drive any more, I kinda took every other precaution possible. The scar on my forehead used to be lightning bolt shaped until we went to a muggle plastic surgeon. I dyed my hair when I went to Diagon Alley. I went to a random muggle school far from home under the Black name. That’s where I met Hermione, by the way, I saw her blast some bullies with accidental magic and told her that she’s a witch. Remus taught both of us how to defend ourselves. I can cast _Protego, Expelliarmus_ and _Stupefy_ quite well, which is more than what I’d have learnt at the Dursleys.”

“Impressive. I have a friend who’d approve. He’s the one who found Pettigrew and caused Sirius to be released, by the way. What a tragedy that situation was.”

“Well, I guess things weren’t ideal, but they’ll work out from now. Apology accepted. I guess I should return to Ravenclaw now and finish unpacking. Goodbye, Professor. Oh, and before I forget: Sirius mentioned my father had a cloak that he lent you?”

That went a _lot_ better than expected, I thought as I headed back invisibly.

-HP-HP-HP-

“We have to say we were quite surprised to receive a note from Harry Potter requesting our help. So, here we are, what is it?”, asked one of the Weasley twins.

“Well, you see, I live with my godfather, and he and my father were part of a little group that got a reputation as pranksters, they were always _up to no good_. So now I’m expected to live up to that, but I don’t really know how to _manage mischief_ that well. I heard you two were the current experts in that field.”

“You want us to help you do pranks?”

“Pretty much.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Something big and impressive, but harmless and not traceable back to me. Ideally targeting the entire school equally, I don’t want to get caught up in the Gryffindor Slytherin feud.”

-HP-HP-HP-

“I can’t believe it! Half the class didn’t even stay awake! And not just the Hufflepuffs, but _Ravenclaws_ too!”

We just had History, and Hermione is furious. To be honest, I agree. Binns is a terrible teacher. I’ll have to think of something.

-HP-HP-HP-

“..that is, if you’re not the kind of dunderheads I usually have to teach.”

“That sounds rehearsed,'' whispered Terry Boot next to me in potions class.

“It is. He used the same speech in the Gryffindor and Slytherin class.”

Dangit, hopefully he won’t realize that that class won’t happen until tomorrow. Well, it was probably the same speech last year.

“Potter! What’s the result of combining powdered root of asphodel with an infusion of wormwood?”

Hey, that’s even the same first question. I guess there’s a reason for it. That language of flowers theory could be it.

“Both are required for Draught of the Living Death, but it has to be in the correct ratio of thirteen to seven, at exactly the right temperature while stirring counterclockwise, otherwise you’d get a Draught of Very Real and Very Painful Death. The plants asphodel and wormwood also symbolize death, mourning and regret.”

“Correct. What’s the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?”

“Both names refer to the same genus of plants, Aconite. Monkshood is also a garment and Wolfsbane is also the name of a potion, although an obsolete one.”

Snape looked a bit surprised, then he probably realized that I had made it obsolete and continued.

“Of course, you’d know all about that. Well, where would you look if you had to get me a Bezoar?”

I pulled one out of my pocket. Snape stared at it and answered.

“Ten points to Ravenclaw.”

That went well. Throughout the rest of the lesson, Hermione earned another five. Wouldn’t have happened in Gryffindor. Me not being a dunderhead in the first class helped, too.

All in all, Hogwarts is proving to be a rather enjoyable experience. Except for Defense class...


	10. Celestial misdesignations

**Chapter 10: Celestial misdesignations**

Seventh floor, where exactly was it again, painting of some crazy guy, something with trolls?

I should’ve written it down right after I ended up in this world…

Ah, this might be it. A tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy teaching trolls to dance. Interesting, it looks like he’s getting half decent results, trolls appear to be more intelligent than most people think.

But that’s not why I’m here.

_I need the Ravenclaw Diadem. I need the Ravenclaw Diadem. I need the Ravenclaw Diadem._

Nothing. Damn.

_I need the room with all the hidden things. I need the room with all the hidden things. I need the room with all the hidden things._

Wow! That door wasn’t there a moment ago! Let’s see…

....now _that’s_ a lot of junk.

This is going to take forever, and it’s quite likely that a few of these things are cursed….

Wait a moment, do I have a house elf who spent half his life in a house full of cursed artefacts or not?

“Kreacher!” _Crack!_

“Young Master Harry? You have called Kreacher?”

“First, it’s just Harry, I don’t know how often I told you that. Well, I did promise that we were going to do something about Regulus’s locket. I think I did mention that there are other objects like it we need to find as well. I’m pretty sure that there’s one in this room. Could you help find it? Also, could you warn me if you notice any cursed objects?”

With Kreacher’s help, it didn’t take too long until I found the second -well, technically third- Horcrux. I still don’t trust myself to attempt the Gaunt Shack since I have zero canon knowledge of what protections to expect, and no idea how to get the ones entrusted to Death Eaters. But, it’s progress. If I get lucky I might figure out a way to defeat Voldemort without needing to destroy the Horcruxes, but I’m still going to collect them when given the opportunity.

“Hey Kreacher, I did notice that you can apparate here. Human wizards can’t, this room is in Hogwarts, largest permanent anti apparition jinx in the country. Do you know if you can side along me?”

“No, Young Master Just Harry. Elves can apparate here, but if one tried to bring along a human they’d get splinched quite badly.”

Too bad. Apparating in Hogwarts would’ve been just too good. I guess that’s something only Phoenix owners can do. But still, I got a Horcrux and figured out how to use the Room. It’s something!

-HP-HP-HP-

“NO, NO, NO! There is NO WAY that there are nine planets! If you count Pluto, then you also have to count at least a dozen other dwarf planets in the main asteroid and the Kuiper belt! I won’t accept this!”

“Mister Potter! Please calm down!”

So, astronomy lessons aren’t going quite as well as I’d have liked. At least the Hubble finally launched with one year delay after that huge scandal when a newspaper got an anonymous insider letter about the botched job on the primary mirror…

-HP-HP-HP-

Act normal.

Act normal.

Occlumency. Focus.

Act normal.

Act normal.

Ignore the high certainty that an immortal Dark Lord is in the same room as you.

Act normal.

Act normal.

Express mild annoyance at the stuttering teacher.

Act normal.

Act nor-

“Psst, Harry, are you okay?”

“Yeah, Hermione, why are you asking? Everything is fine, don’t worry.”

_Act normal._

_Act normal._

_Ignore the teacher being secretly evil._

_Act-_

“ _No way! Quirrel is Voldemort?”_

“ _ACT NORMAL!”_

I really hope I’ll get better at ignoring Britain’s worst mass murderer being in the same room as I am. This is pure mental torture.

-HP-HP-HP-

“Neville! Nice to see you!”

“Hi, Harry, Hermione.”

“How are things going?”

“Great, really. I thought a lot about what you mentioned in the train, about me being my own person and not a copy of my parents, and how I should live my own life. The Hat agreed, you know, and told me that I’d have it much easier in Hufflepuff, but it also told me that Gryffindor might be harder but it’d help me find the courage to find my own destiny, whatever it meant with that. Well, I said that I’d be willing to do that, and here I am - Gryffindor.”

“Great for you! Ravenclaw is pretty awesome too. The library even has a small section on muggle sciences!”

Of course that’s the first thing Hermione mentions. I was pretty positively surprised too, some of the upper years know quite a bit about electromagnetism and magical interference. Fascinating topic, although sadly calculus isn’t on the Hogwarts curriculum and without that it’s quite difficult to make sense of it. I might spend some time researching the subject, given that I learnt a lot of it in class years ago..

“Harry, could you please answer my question?”

Damn, I should’ve listened instead of zoning out and thinking about physics….


	11. School Improvement

**Chapter 11: School Improvement**

So, let’s check the TO-DO list: Do something about Quirrel, convince the Weasley Twins to give me the map, destroy Voldemort, find the remaining Horcruxes, maybe collect the Hallows, explain to Hermione why I thought she’d be more easily capable of acting normal in Defense class if I didn’t tell her about Quirrel, apologize and promise that I won’t keep her out of the loop any more, break that promise by not telling her about Horcruxes because that’s not something an 11 year old should have to deal with, realize that I’m an awful human being, get back on track, finish my Potions essay, do something to improve the quality of History class…

That might be something I could do. Okay, goal: Replace Binns with a decent teacher.

Available resources: Public support, everyone in Ravenclaw wants to get rid of Binns, my fame as Boy-Who-Lived, a somewhat wealthy adoptive father with a cleared criminal record, an invisibility cloak - no, The Cloak Of Invisibility -, a decent repertoire of spells mostly first year with a few advanced ones thrown in, basic physics and chemistry knowledge and a little talent for wandless levitation.

Most of that probably won’t help much. I could sneak up on Binns and try to attack him, but I don’t actually know if it’s even possible to attack a ghost. Let’s try the official route, convince Dumbledore to replace him with a decent teacher.

Many other students have already tried that, so I need something that nobody else has… I got an idea.

-HP-HP-HP-

Dinner in the Great Hall. Pretty much everyone is present. Perfect opportunity. Here goes nothing.

I stood up and walked over to the teacher’s table.

“Excuse me, Professor McGonagall, Professor Dumbledore. I have a small question about the school. How do I transfer to Ilvermorny?”

The look on Dumbledore’s face… golden. “Why would you want to do that?”

“Well, I considered Beauxbatons but my French is awful, and while I do happen to know German I heavily dislike Durmstrang’s policies. As for Hogwarts, well, I’d love to stay but frankly, the quality of education here is miserable.”

McGonagall seemed quite shocked. “What do you mean, miserable?”

“Well, for once, the percentage of students for whom History class is more naptime than learning time is way too high. Binns is just plain boring. While it’s decent for Ravenclaws, Potions class is absolutely awful for Gryffindors, and I do have some friends in that house. Astronomy class doesn’t teach the right planets. You can’t understand anything in Defence class because Professor Quirrel stutters so much, and from what I heard the previous Defense professors were even worse. The caretaker makes it no secret that he doesn’t like being around children. From what I hear from the upper year students, it’s not much better there. The Divination professor has a track record of just one true prophecy, thank you very much for that. Muggle studies is at least four decades out of date, there is no equivalent to teach students who grew up muggle about the magical world. Let’s face it, the teachers are completely overworked with only one teacher per subject teaching the entire school, student complaints are completely ignored, there’s rarely anyone in the common rooms to supervise and the brooms used for flying lessons are in such a bad condition it’s a small miracle there hasn’t been a serious accident yet. Did I forget anything? Oh yeah, the corridor of very painful death. Very appropriate for a school to have something like that.”

-HP-HP-HP-

Well, you can imagine the result. Pretty much everyone stared at me in disbelief. Snape, Quirrel and Sinistra looked pretty angry. Dumbledore asked me to discuss it further in private, and here we were, in his office.

“Harry, what was that supposed to be?”

“Well, sir, it is as I said, there are some serious deficiencies here. I’d like a decent education, so I want to transfer.”

“I’m sorry Harry, I’m afraid I can’t let you do that. You’re too important and you’d be in too much danger elsewhere. There are some very important things about you that I can’t tell you yet. You’ll understand later, I promise.”

“Well, as far as I know I’m the Boy-Who-Lived, pretty important figure in Britain… I’d very much prefer to stay here, but if there’s no improvement I’d be forced to leave, and since I announced it in the Great Hall it wouldn’t take long until the people found out why, the _Daily Prophet_ would have a field day, Rita Skeeter would write some inflammatory articles, the public outrage would be pretty high and you might get replaced as Headmaster with someone who isn’t juggling two other full time jobs. Is that the important thing I’d understand later?”

Dumbledore looked shocked. “Harry, are you trying to _blackmail_ me into improving Hogwarts?”

“Honestly, all I’m trying to do is to get Binns replaced. I tried a normal complaint, it didn’t go anywhere just like the ones filed by other students, so I’m trying something nobody else has done before. It’s nothing personal, I did forgive you for the Dursleys.”

Dumbledore sighed. “Well, Harry, I’ll see what I can do. I tried replacing Binns in the past, but I couldn’t find anyone suitable. But it is imperative that you stay at Hogwarts, not because of the public relations issue, but because the fate of the world might depend on it. You see, there’s something I did not wish to burden you with until you were older. I did not place you with the Dursleys because your safety might be endangered by rogue Death Eaters. No, I have reason to believe that Voldemort himself might still be alive. And because of that you have to stay at the safest school.”

“Now that’s fascinating, the last time we talked about my safety you mentioned that my precautions seemed paranoid. Well, there’s a very solid reason for the paranoia. It’s got to do something with how my parents defied Voldemort at least three times, and with my birthday. Don’t look surprised, you told my parents about the prophecy, they told Sirius because of course they did, and he told me.”

Actually, I knew beforehand and made a _really_ good guess to prompt him to tell me what he knew.

“You see, Professor, I’ve known for years that one day I’d have to face Voldemort, and since I really want to survive that day, my entire strategy so far has been to prepare myself as best as I can, to learn anything that might be useful. For example, _Wingardium Leviosa!_ ”

A book on his desk started floating.

“You’re casting levitation without your wand?”

I nodded. “Took forever to learn, but it’s pretty useful. One of many small powers I learned that Voldemort wouldn’t expect. I spent the past two years learning like crazy. It’s a start, but if I really want to have a chance against the most powerful dark wizard of the century I need far more than making a book fly. That’s why I’m rather frustrated by the teaching quality here.”

“Harry, what do you expect me to do? I know that the state of Defence class leaves much to be desired, but there just aren’t any decent teachers any more. Believe it or not, I am doing my best.”

“Well, I don’t expect you to turn Hogwarts into a school for teaching eleven year olds how to defeat dark wizards. But I do have a few suggestions. From what I’ve seen the teachers seem to have a massive workload teaching four houses of seven years, with only one teacher for each subject. If I was in charge, I’d hire teaching assistants for all the core subjects.

In Defence, the assistant could be the real specialist so that if the actual teacher changes each year, the education still stays consistent.

In History, it’d be great to keep Binns for his unmatched expertise and still get someone who can make class interesting.

In Potions, the assistant could teach the basics to the first few years so that Professor Snape can teach the advanced classes. From what I can tell he’s hopelessly overqualified to teach first years how to stir a cauldron properly, he’s not enjoying it and the result is that nobody likes his class.

I know it seems like a bit much, asking you to expand the staff, but I really think it’d help massively to improve the learning experience for everyone, Professor Dumbledore. Consider it.”

“Harry, that’s a good idea, but it’s not that simple. The school does have a limited budget, and your suggestion would have to get approved by the board of governors.”

“Well, if you need help convincing them you can tell them that they really don’t want to become famous for being the reason Britain is without it’s national hero, as additional motivation.”

-HP-HP-HP-

About an hour of discussing the details of how to run a school and potential improvements later, I returned to Ravenclaw Tower. I went to a side corner of the common room, where a group of students eagerly awaited my return.

“What happened?”, Anthony Goldstein inquired.

I sat down. “Mission Accomplished.”

“Yesss!”

“How did it go?”, asked Lisa Turpin, who had done the math on how many hours each Professor had to work. Definitely too many, even if they had access to pocket time machines.

“He agreed to hire full time assistants for Potions, Defence, History, Charms, Transfiguration and Herbology, part time for the electives. I didn’t get the new brooms, sorry Cho.”

“Did you use my idea?”, asked Terry Boot, who’d come up with the blackmailing thing. Muggleborn and more ruthless and cunning than anyone in Slytherin. I nodded.

“I’m still saying that was way too risky, Harry. You could’ve been expelled!”

“Calm down, Hermione. There was no way they’d expel the Boy-Who-Lived. Way too famous.” William Jackson from second year had grown up with Harry Potter storybooks and was a bit of a fan, but not too annoying.

He was right though, there was no way Dumbledore would’ve expelled me, although less because of my celebrity status and more because of the whole having to fight Voldemort thing. Not that he knew about that.

Word spread around the common room and soon a small party had started amongst the Ravenclaws.

“ _We are getting a decent education_

_We are getting a decent education_

_We are getting a decent education_

_Nooow, good teachers!”_

I honestly can’t remember which year the _Macarena_ is from, I hope it’s already released or it won’t happen for a few years, otherwise people might wonder from where I got the melody.


	12. And… Action!

**Chapter 12: And… Action!**

“Hey, Potter, what are you doing here? Ravenclaw won’t have flying lessons until tomorrow!”

True, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff flying lessons are tomorrow, but today the Gryffindors and Slytherins are having the first lesson of the year. Since there’s a decent possibility of either Neville getting hurt by being Neville or someone with bad luck getting hurt by using a damaged broom - not sure which of the two options caused the incident in canon - I’m going to watch with a Wingardium ready in case something like that happens.

“I’m just going to watch, Malfoy. I want to see if your flying skills match your tales of narrowly escaping helicopters.”

-HP-HP-HP-

Sure enough, flying lessons started, Malfoy got told that he’d been doing it wrong all along, and this time it was Goyle who got the damaged broom and went off like an unguided rocket. Well, not quite like a rocket, that would have a completely different acceleration, brooms seem to max out at a certain velocity based on quality, why am I thinking about broom physics instead of doing something?

“ _WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA!_ ”

Luckily Wingardium isn’t a spell that has to be aimed precisely at its target, it’s enough to aim roughly in the right direction and specify the target and its desired motion in your mind.

“And that’s why I asked Professor Dumbledore to consider upgrading the school brooms, but no, not enough budget,'' I complained as I carefully lowered Goyle to the ground while his broom continued flying in wild spirals.

Madam Hooch examined him. “He’s a bit shocked but no serious injuries. Good catch, Mr. Potter, ten points to Ravenclaw. That could’ve ended a lot worse.”

If Flitwick had seen that charm it’d have probably a lot more than ten points…

Meanwhile, Madam Hooch went chasing after the broom and Malfoy seemed like he didn’t know what to think about me saving his minion.

“You know, Potter, you’re right. It’s a travesty how the school gets mismanaged so much that it can’t afford decent brooms. I’ll write to my father, he’ll do something about it.”

A variation of “my father will hear about this”, but for once not directed at me. Neat.

“Isn’t he, like, really rich? He could probably donate a set of modern Nimbuses for the entire school, you know, to make sure people know he’s a _respectable member of society_.”

One Death Eater with less money and better brooms for the school seem like a decent deal to me. It’s not like anyone who knows that Malfoy just bought his way out after the last war would be swayed by Malfoy buying publicity again.

Unfortunately, Draco didn’t react well to me mentioning his father.

“What’s this about, Potter? Last week you said he was a Death Eater, now you suddenly want money from him? Right after that big theatre yesterday where you supposedly told _Albus Dumbledore_ how to run the school? Let me guess, you two planned the entire thing so that the _Boy-Who-Lived_ could be the saviour of Hogwarts, because saving the world obviously wasn’t good enough. Did you also do this? Sabotage my friend’s broom so that you, you _Hero_ could save him?”

Oh my god, he’s more paranoid than the average Indy!Harry, seeing manipulative!Dumbledore everywhere.

“Draco, I knew that the brooms were in bad condition and when Goyle’s broom malfunctioned, I reacted. That’s all.”

“Oh, like a first year could cast a levitation charm like that! You had your wand out before and just pretended to cast while Dumbledore or someone else caught Goyle! You think you’re some kind of noble hero, but you’re not, and I’ll prove it. Wizard’s duel, Potter. At midnight, in the trophy room.”

Choo choo, the canon train will arrive at midnight duel station in five minutes. Doors will open on the left, please mind the gap. Seriously, who is running this universe?

-HP-HP-HP-

**Author’s Note: I am. And I had a nice idea for the duel before deciding to not do the remembrall chase, because you aren’t in the same class as Malfoy and Neville. Now shut up and let me continue with the story!**

-HP-HP-HP-

Terry responded to my summary of events by quoting Star Wars.

“It’s a trap.”

“Of course it is. The trophy room is on the other side of the castle. If I’m there at midnight, chances are high I’d get caught for being out late, especially if he’s going to tip off Filch. The question is, what are we going to do?”

“I’d say we go with the established theme”, answered Lisa with a smile. “Improving education.”

-HP-HP-HP-

Professor Flitwick was quite pleasantly surprised to see me, Hermione, Terry, Lisa, Anthony, William and Cho in his office.

“Welcome, welcome. Rolanda told me about what happened at flying class today, Mr. Potter. Very impressive use of the levitation charm.”

“Thanks, but that’s not why we’re here, Professor. We actually wanted to ask you about establishing a school club. Now, while technically it’s Professor Quirrel’s subject, you’re our Head of House, you’re more likely to still be employed next year, and you’re probably more knowledgeable about the subject.”

-HP-HP-HP-

Dinner in the Great Hall, Déjà Vu. Well, it’s something that’s going to happen practically every day from now on, but this is the second day in a row that something important is happening here.

Professor Flitwick stood up. “Today, a few students approached me with a wonderful idea they had. Many in this school probably know that before I became a teacher here at Hogwarts, I spent some time doing competitive dueling. And from today on, I will do my best to educate a future generation in that noble sport. I am pleased to announce the Hogwarts Dueling Club.”

The look on Malfoy’s face when he realized… glorious.

“The club will meet every Saturday afternoon, but we’ll start today after dinner. Two of the students who have expressed interest in the club have agreed to perform a small demonstration.”

-HP-HP-HP-

After dinner finished, Dumbledore waved his wand, levitated the tables into the center of the Great Hall and transfigured them into a stage. With another wave, a shimmering barrier appeared surrounding it, probably some sort of shield to stop any spells from hitting the audience.

I and Malfoy walked towards the stage, him visibly angry but trying not to show that this wasn’t what he'd planned. His expression slowly turned into a cruel smile.

“I’ll get you for this, Potter,'' he whispered.

“You wanted a duel, you got it.”

Meanwhile Flitwick explained the rules. “Very well! We will be using the beginner tournament rules. No dangerous spells. I will count to three, then the opponents shall cast. Is everything clear? Good, then, one, two,”

“ _Petrificus.._ ”

“Three!”

“.. _Totalus!_ ”

“ _Protego!_ ”

Malfoy’s curse splashed harmlessly against my protective shield. I kept my eyes on him and adressed the audience.

“As you can see, Draco opened with a Body Bind, circle and root, intent to harm and immobilize. Since it’s a simple category B curse I parried with a basic Shield Charm, circle and swish, intent to protect. Now I shall demonstrate a counterattack, diagonal swish and spiral, intent to affect negatively but not to harm, _Expelliarmus!_ ”

I didn’t expect Malfoy to know an effective counter to the disarmer, so I wasn’t surprised when his wand flew into the audience. Over at the teacher’s table, I noticed Quirrel glaring at me. Well, let’s have _him_ think that I just performed my signature move.

“Excellent! What an excellent demonstration!”, Flitwick seemed overjoyed. “Twenty points to Ravenclaw, and twenty to Slytherin for explaining the concepts of dueling! If you are interested in the Dueling Club, the first official meeting is this Saturday, 3pm, here in the Great Hall.”

And that’s how I started a school club just to get back at Malfoy. Well, not really, it was mostly to make sure everyone learns how to fight even if the annual Defence Professor is incompetent, just in case I fail at stopping Voldemort. I really hope it won’t come to that, so let’s pretend I did it to embarrass Malfoy in front of the entire school for now.


	13. Grouping with Gryffindors

**Chapter 13: Grouping with Gryffindors**

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you asked the Room of Requirement for a hallway containing two Rooms of Requirement?

Well, I can safely say that whoever designed it -probably Rowena Ravenclaw- knew what she was doing, because the Room handled the recursive requirement perfectly flawlessly.

Of course that’s not the only thing I tried. The Room is so awesome and useful I spent half the weekend in here, just trying out different things. As far as I can tell it’s using a very simple form of legilimency on the user to determine what it’s supposed to turn into, because when I ask it for something that nobody else has probably asked it before, then it only works if I push the entire mental image, and not just the request sentence, it front of my occlumency.

After a few hours I figured out how to request more complicated rooms and spent quite some time preparing this specific configuration.

“Fred, are you sure we should just go somewhere because a note told us to?”

Speaking of which, the guests I prepared it for just arrived. They haven’t noticed me yet, although that’s to be expected since I’m using the world’s only perfect invisibility cloak.

“I’m not sure, a secret meeting in an unused classroom on the top floor seems pretty sketchy, but something tells me this isn’t some Slytherin trick.”

“It’s just, I could’ve sworn there wasn’t a room here last year. But we didn’t really come up here that often so I could be wrong.”

“Well, something is definitely going on. This isn’t a classroom, it’s a bloody hallway!”

Technically it is a room, but one I asked to shape itself into a small maze. The twins strolled to the end of the first corridor where I’d tested the Room’s capability for shaping itself by asking it to engrave a message.

“George, look, it’s a poem.

_Enter, Prankster, but take care_

_Of dangers of your gag warfare_

_For the line of joke and harm_

_Is thin and may cause loss of arm_

_Making mischief is not hard_

_But doing it right is an art_

_To make it not end in arrest,_

_Go ahead and take the test!”_

“Since when does Hogwarts have a poem about proper pranking procedure?”

“No idea, brother, but it seems like it’s a test for us.”

George pulled out a sheet of parchment, whispered something, and scowled. “This room. Whatever it is, it’s not on the map.”

“Now this is interesting. Come on, let’s see what’s this all about.”

George seemed a bit suspicious, but Fred was eager to explore and pulled him along into the second chamber.

“Woah.”

Yeah, woah. I spent at least half an hour figuring out how to make the room expand to three stories tall, then place the entrance at the top and fill the bottom with water. After that placing a set of ropes to the exit on the other side was pretty easy.

“The sign here says it’s the test of courage. Apparently we got to climb to the other side.”

Well, while impressive looking and time consuming to set up, it wasn’t that difficult of a challenge. The two climbed across and I asked the room to open the side tunnel for me so that I could wait in the third chamber, after the maze part.

“Come on George, this is awesome, let’s see what’s in the next room!”

“A table with ink and parchment? It looks like a written exam, Fred.”

“It says test of intelligence. Let’s see. _Let i be an imaginary number with the property of i*i = -1. Multiply 1+3*i and 2-6*i._ Do you have any idea what that means?”

Well, after a while they figured out that the answer was 20, and I asked the room to open the next chamber, containing another table, two boxes and a small pile of postcards.

Fred examined the boxes.

“It says test of wisdom. One box says bad advice, the other one good.”

Meanwhile George had picked up a postcard and read it.

“ _Color change charms are useful and easily reversible._ I guess that’s good advice, remember when we turned all the Slytherin’s hair green?”

“Here’s another one. _When you see a first year of one house getting bullied by three older students of another house, you should do something to help. That slimy snake will have no chance against five of you!_ I think it’s implying that we’re not supposed to do that.”

A little later they’d finished sorting the advice and I opened the door to the last room. It had started as an experiment on if the room could read memories good enough to recreate a picture from my mind that I’d seen years ago on the internet. It turned out to result in a quite nice looking mural.

“Do you see any sign of what we’re supposed to do here?”

“No, just this painting on the wall. A wolf, a stag, and a dog with a rat in its mouth. No idea what it means.”

“Hmm, there’s a moon behind the wolf. And a dog footprint symbol above the dog. There’s a symbol of a rat tail here, between the footprint and the stag’s antlers. It’s almost as if the four symbols form a row.”

“Some form of coded message? Moon, antlers, rat tail, pad print.”

“No. I think it’s Moony, Prongs, Wormtail, Padfoot!”

“Correct.”

The two spun around and stared at me.

“Did you like my little challenge? I spent half the weekend on it.”

Their jaws dropped. Then, George burst out laughing, “Fred, brother, I think we’ve been had. Barely here a week and he’s teaching us lessons in pranking. Including the written exam!”

“How did you do that? Create this entire thing? I didn’t even know there was anything here!”

I mentally asked the room to return to being a simple classroom, and while the two watched the room’s walls fold in on themselves I explained.

“It’s this amazing room I found. You have to walk past the tapestry three times and think of something, then it can transfigure itself into it.”

Fred appeared to have realized something. “So, last week you mentioned that your godfather and your father were in a group of pranksters. They were Moony, Padfoot, Wormtail and Prongs, weren’t they?”

“Yes. Prongs was James Potter. My father. Moony, Remus Lupin, as Remus was one of Rome’s founders, raised by a wolf, and wolves are lupine. Padfoot, the black dog, I’ll give you a hint: The star Sirius is also called the Dog Star.”

“Sirius Black? Wasn’t he in Azkaban for a while, until they found that criminal Pettigrew hiding as Percy’s rat.. Oohh, so he was Wormtail?”

I nodded. “The four were pretty close friends, until Pettigrew betrayed my parents, got my father killed and Sirius imprisoned. After they caught the rat, Sirius adopted me and Remus has been pretty much an honorary uncle for me for the last few years.”

“So that explains where you got the skill from to pull one over on us!”

George smiled and took out a piece of parchment. “Well, if you’re Prongs’ son, I think this belongs to you.”

I took it and tapped it with my wand. “Let me guess, I solemnly swear I am up to no good. Nice, it works! Sirius told me all about the map they made when they were at school.”

I took a look at the map. Absolutely amazing piece of spellwork. Remus did tell me a bit about how they had made it work, they had placed many tracking charms throughout Hogwarts, each connected to a Protean Charm feeding the information to the map, where a Homonculous Charm does some data processing and displaying.

“You know, I think you two are actually going to use it more for its intended purpose, but I could really use it for other things as well. I’ll give it to you if you let me borrow it when I need it. Oh, and by the way”, I pulled out a mirror from my pocket, “Sirius Black! Hi Sirius, guess what, you got fans!”

-HP-HP-HP-

So, I introduced the twins to Sirius and Remus and borrowed the map for a little excursion. I found Neville in the library, reading a charms book.

“Hi Neville! How’s it going?”

“Harry, hello! It’s okay, I’m just having a little trouble with Lumus right now. _Lumos!_ ”

A small, faint light appeared at his wand, and went out after a second.

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. According to the book, the loop is exactly the right wand movement, but I couldn’t do it in class and I can’t get it right now.”

“Let me try. _Lumos._ ”

I got the typical result, bright light. It’s a really simple charm, mostly used to introduce first years to the basics of casting charms, because it’s so simple most manage in the first class. But those who don’t are usually making an obvious mistake and get no result at all until they get it right. A partial result like this is odd.

“ _Nox._ I think you did do it right, otherwise there wouldn’t have been any light at all.”

Neville got a depressed look. “Do you think… that maybe I’m not that good at magic?”

“Don’t say that. Whatever people tell you about some wizards being stronger than others, it’s all a myth. Everyone with magic got pretty much the same thing, as do you. The only difference is that some know more spells than others. How good a spell gets cast depends only on how accurate the incantation and wand movement is, and with that you were spot on. Lumos isn’t a spell that needs a specific intent or emotion. There’s just one reason I can think of. Give me your wand. _Lumos_.”

I could feel the magic resisting a bit, and got a small light that quickly went out.

“My Gran is going to kill me, that’s my father’s wand and I was supposed to be careful and not break it.”

“Well, maybe it’s not broken. It’s just not yours. If it’s unicorn hair, those are really loyal and don’t work properly for anyone but the original owner.”

Neville took it again. “What should I do? I’m supposed to learn magic here and I don’t have a proper wand.”

“Oh, don’t worry. Just come with me.”

-HP-HP-HP-

“Harry, what are we doing on the third floor?”

“You’ll see. _Dissendium._ ”

The password opened the passage behind the one-eyed witch statue and soon we were in the tunnel to Hogsmeade.

“What is this place?”

“It’s what it looks like, a secret tunnel. It’s leading to Hogsmeade. No idea who built it, but nowadays it’s mostly used by Fred and George Weasley to smuggle in butterbeer. Oh, and: Kreacher!”

“What can Kreacher do for Young Master Just Harry?”

“Hi Kreacher, that’s Neville. Neville, that’s Kreacher, my godfather’s elf. Kreacher, this tunnel goes from Hogwarts to Hogsmeade. Could you tell us when we’re far enough away that we can apparate?”

-HP-HP-HP-

_Crack!_

“Harry, I don’t think we’re supposed to be here.”

“Don’t worry. You need a wand, so we’re here at Ollivanders. We’ll be back before dinner, nobody will notice anything, except maybe that you’re going to be doing way better in charms.”

“Good afternoon. Neville Longbottom. I had assumed you’d come and buy your wand during the holidays, I was quite worried when you did not. I assume you’ve been using your father’s wand? Oak wood, hair from a particularly excitable unicorn, twelve inches, I remember the day I sold it like it was yesterday. Yes, I can see why you’re here now. Let’s find you a properly matched wand, shall we?”

-HP-HP-HP-

On the way back through the tunnel, I distinctly remembered something else.

“Neville, do you know why you were using your father’s wand? Was it your grandmother’s idea?”

“Well, no, actually it was my great-uncle Algie who suggested it. Gran didn’t like it at first but he told her it’d make me a better wizard like my father if I used his wand.”

“The same uncle Algie who dropped you out of a window?”

“Yeah, that’s him. I bounced around a lot, everyone was really happy that I had magic after all.”

“Your family is quite wealthy, right?”

“We’re not the Malfoys, but we got a lot of land and greenhouses, quite large family business, why do you ask?”

“I’m just thinking, what would have happened if you hadn’t bounced?”

“Uh, I guess… I’d have died.”

“And if that had happened, with your parents and you gone, who’d have inherited the family business?”

“Uncle Algie… you think… that bastard! You know what, I’m going to kill him!”, Neville yelled in anger.

“Well”, I grimly said while pointing at his brightly glowing wand, “now you have a wand that could do it.”


	14. Terrarium Scabiosa!

**Chapter 14: Terrarium Scabiosa!**

A little later Neville had calmed down a bit and agreed that instead of plotting murder, contacting the Department of Magical Law Enforcement was maybe a better idea.

As it turned out, Angie hadn’t actually wanted the family business, he’d just hated Frank for years, and after the whole Lestrange incident he’d just been mad that they hadn’t gotten Neville. Complete psychopath. Good thing he's in St. Mungo's now, getting psychological treatment.

Well, after that there weren’t any relevant incidents for a while. People gradually stopped looking at me like some celebrity and got used to me being another student, even if I and Hermione had no trouble beating everyone in almost every class.

Eventually some of the additional teachers got hired, and my efforts at convincing Snape that I’m not a typical dunderhead were for naught cause he stopped teaching below year 5. At least Professor Weatherford gets along a lot better with the class.

My petition to switch homework essays from inches to centimeters or standardized pages failed miserably, Fred and George spent way too much time on the mirror asking Sirius and Remus for details on pranks they pulled two decades ago, I finally got around to getting to know Ron - no idea why I put it off for so long - and spent a lot of time discussing “hypothetical” plots for the Star Wars with Terry.

Maybe I should work on another item off my TO-DO list.

-HP-HP-HP-

"Good evening, Professor Dumbledore. We need to talk."

“Hello, Harry. Do you want a Lemon Sherbet? No? Well, let me ask what brings you to my office today? I was under the impression that you were happy with my efforts to hire more staff members.”

“Oh, it’s not that, Professor. The school’s running great. But we really need to talk about the elephant in the room, or more precisely, the dark wizard in the castle.”

“Harry, I know Severus is not the nicest person, but despite what your new father might have told you, he’s absolutely on our side.”

“Oh, not Snape. We’re actually getting along okay-ish. I’m talking about Professor Quirrel.”

Dumbledore seemed surprised, but not quite as much as I expected. “Quirinus?”

“Yes. Right now I’m about 90% certain that he’s got something nefarious planned, 70% certain he’s working for Voldemort.”

The actual numbers are 99.9% and 99%, by the way. But I can’t reveal too much of what I know.

“Ninety percent certain he’s evil? Harry, he’s the Defense Professor. Why do you think he’s dark?”

“First of all, he’s the Defense Professor. There’s always something going on with whoever has that position. Second, he fakes his stutter. If you spend a few hours every week listening to how he speaks in his classes, you notice that. Third, I get a weird feeling where my lightning bolt scar used to be whenever I look in his direction. In storybooks that’s called foreshadowing. And fourth, back during the welcoming feast he tried to use legilimency on me, or something similar - with the back of his head. There’s got to be something weird going on under that turban.”

Dumbledore listened calmly, but the last one appeared to have surprised him a bit. “Legilimency, with the back of his head? Are you certain?”

“Well, I’m only the second best Occlumens in my year,” I admitted, ”but I certainly recognize a blunt force legilimency attack.”

“So, you learned Occlumency? And I presume by second best you mean that however you learnt it, Hermione Granger did too??”

“Correct. It was one of the vital skills I decided I’d definitely need to have a chance against Voldemort. Hermione and I both spent quite some time learning Occlumency and a bit of Legilimency too so that we could train more.”

This did appear to concern him. “Harry, are you telling me that you are practicing Legilimency on each other?”

“Well, we figured out pretty quickly that the best way to get better is to practice. So as soon as we managed to somewhat organize our minds we added little training areas where we only put irrelevant memories and thoughts, then whenever we want to train one of us selects a specific memory like a memorable scene from a movie or a book, hides that thought in the training area of their mind, and the other partner then has to figure out how to read that memory. It’s a variant on a partner training technique we found in an old book in Sirius’s family library.”

“You do know that some of the books his family collected are rather dark in nature, do you?”

“Of course. But there’s plenty of normal books too, including a lot of quite rare ones. And if I’m going to have to go up against Voldemort, I’m not going to say no to any massive advantage that I get for practically free. Now, let’s get the conversation back on track and discuss how we’re going to keep an eye on Quirrel’s activities, okay?”

-HP-HP-HP-

“Um, Professor Snape?”

“What is it, Potter? As by your own recommendation, I no longer teach you Potions. Unless you want to ask something on O.W.L level, Professor Weatherford’s office is on the first floor, west wing. And while you seem to have inherited at least some of your mother’s brilliance, don’t tell me you’re four years ahead of the curriculum.”

“Well, actually I wanted to ask about something like that. When brewing Draught of Living Death, wouldn’t it be a good idea to crush the Sopophorous bean instead of cutting it? I mean, theoretically, that’d be a much better way to get at the juice.”

“Potter, while it would be indeed a very good idea, I would heavily recommend against you brewing that potion as a first year. And where did you get that idea in the first place? Don’t tell me you figured out an improvement like that by yourself, without even having brewed the potion.”

“Well, it wasn’t really my idea. You see, I asked Madam Pince if I could look through the school’s stock of used textbooks to see if I could maybe find something owned by my parents, since I don’t really have anything from them, and I found this potions book full of interesting ideas on how to improve common potions.”

I pulled it out of my bag and continued. “It’s a shame it doesn’t say whose book it is, because if all the tips are as good as that one about crushing the bean, the author must be a _true potions genius_. Whoever it is, they could probably make a fortune publishing these _amazing_ improvements, teach them to the next generation of potions _prodigies_ and maybe even invent some _great_ new potions! That is, _unless_ this mysterious author is busy spending all their time teaching eleven year old dunderheads how to properly stir a cauldron.”

I don’t know what I really expected, but not this. Snape _laughed_. “I don’t know what to think of you, Potter, I really don’t. Every time I think I’ve figured it out you come and completely turn my expectations around. When Dumbledore told me he suspected you were with Black, I expected the worst, a copy of your arrogant father. When you got sorted into Ravenclaw and demonstrated a decent amount of skill in Potions, I had a glimmer of hope you were more like your mother. Then you held that smear speech telling the entire school what a terrible teacher I am and extinguished it. Then it ends up with my job being significantly more bearable and now you’re here, praising me.”

“Well, first, it’s not that complicated, Sir. I knew you’re good at really advanced potions. The basics of potions are so obvious to you that you couldn’t fathom why anyone would have trouble with them, so you’re obviously not good at teaching them. So everyone’s happier if someone else is doing that, I have no idea why that wasn’t obvious to everyone. And now that you’re working less hours, you might want additional income and you have some spare time, so I was suggesting you use that spare time to do some good work and invent and sell better potions recipes.

”Second, I found that book, and while it’s so full of great ideas that it was obvious that it had to be yours, I also thought I should probably tell you that you really shouldn’t leave books containing your spells lying around like that. Muffliato is great and harmless and all, but what if someone else found that book, saw _Sectumsempra_ \- _for enemies_ and attempted to use it against an annoying classmate?”

-HP-HP-HP-

Gryffindor/Ravenclaw Charms class with Flitwick. Now we’re finally supposed to learn one of my favorites.

“It’s Levio-o-sa not Levio-sah!”

Well, this scene feels familiar. But given how Hermione looks like she can barely hold her laugh she’s probably done it deliberately.

Maybe I shouldn’t have used that scene from _Philosopher’s Stone_ as the target during one of our “Capture the Memory” games. A side effect of using that method to improve our Occlumency to the point of being able to keep my dimension traveling origin a secret is that Hermione knows a rather unusually large amount of pop culture from two decades in the future.

Now that I think about it, I got an idea...

“Let me try it first. _Terrarium Scabiosa!_ ”

The feather floated. So my theory about the arithmantic properties of incantations might be correct. Everyone Hermione was pretty surprised though, and even she didn’t immediately recognize what I was doing.

“What… How? That’s not the right way to do it at all! What do these words even mean?”

“Scabiosa is a genus of plants, I guess you could have one in a terrarium. No idea what it has to do with floating feathers,“ mentioned Neville.

“Nothing, but it has the same syllable structure as Wingardium Leviosa. I think the way it works is that the pattern of the wand movement and the pattern of the syllables in the incantation have to fit. Probably complicated arithmancy reasons behind it.”

“Ten points to Ravenclaw! Yes, Mr. Potter, you’re correct. The exact properties of arithmantic patterns in spells is something you’ll learn in fourth year Arithmancy. Understanding it is only required for spellcrafting, in Charms class you’ll learn how to best cast a spell whose patterns are known.”

“And let me guess,” I said half guessing and half vaguely remembering arithmancy books way above my level that I had skimmed through months ago, “silent casting works by focusing on the pattern of incantation, like you’d focus on the intent of a spell? And motionless casting by picturing the pattern of the wand movement?”

Now Flitwick got excited and went into full explainer mode, even though most of the class couldn’t really follow and just kept on practicing Wingardium.

“Correct. Technically they’re not necessary, the bare intent of a spell can be enough to successfully cast, but that is not reliable and usually only happens with accidental magic. Mentally focusing on the arithmantic patterns of a spell greatly reduces the intent required, and saying and drawing the patterns makes it possible to cast most spells with very little mental effort.”

“And motionless casting is just one step away from wandless casting, right?”

“Yes, yes, that is true, although wandless casting obviously takes a much greater effort for an inferior result, without the amplifying effect of the wand.”

Right. Wandless is mostly a party trick, or to summon your wand back to you. I guess it could come in useful in edge cases, so I’ll continue practicing it, but it’s true that doing magic with wands is just better. There’s a reason the greek wizards did so well until the Romans copied them, conquered most of europe, and why Europeans later conquered most of the world. Whoever first figured out that a bit of magic animal in a magical stick amplifies and focuses magic probably changed the course of history more than anyone else, ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The magic system for this fic is loosely based on WhiteSquirrel’s Arithmancer series.


	15. Narrative Progress Goes ‘Boink’!

**Chapter 15: Narrative Progress Goes ‘Boink’!**

I must say, the Halloween decorations were impressive. Not that I could really focus on enjoying the feast while Quirrel was missing and probably getting a mountain troll into the castle as a diversion for stealing the Philosopher's Stone.

At least Hermione wasn’t crying in a bathroom, but right here at the Ravenclaw table, discussing Arithmancy with upper years. Meanwhile I was nervous and constantly checking the map, which I had borrowed from the twins for the occasion.

There! Quirrel and an unlabeled, but rather large dot, just appeared on the grounds right where the map ends.

“Psst, Hermione,” _“I need to take care of something. If anyone asks, I’m spending some time alone on the anniversary of my parents deaths.”_

That seemed like the best excuse to roam the castle and accidentally stumble across the Troll. Not the best plan, but Dumbledore didn’t want to take my warning based on a feeling too seriously and I can’t reveal my future information, so I had to cobble a new plan together.

So I went to the entrance hall where Quirrel was according to the map. Invisible, of course. And thank Merlin I paid extra for silencing charms on my boots.

“Nobody’s here. They’re all at the feast, my Lord.”

“Good. Get the troll somewhere where it won’t be immediately found, we need the diversion to last as long as possible.”

My knowledge of Voldemort being here had already made Defense class difficult, but hearing him from under the turban was on a whole new level of scary. Especially since we were alone with a troll.

“ _Imperio._ Go to the dungeons and attack anyone you see. Except me.”

Imperiusing the troll? Interesting, although I had kinda expected something like it. Trolls are intelligent enough to dance, talk and usually don’t immediately attack anyone they come across. Unless instructed to do so.

According to my original plan this would’ve been the point where I should’ve returned and gotten Dumbledore involved after “accidentally witnessing” Quirrel smuggling in a troll. But I got this idea out of the blue that I really wanted to try.

You see, there’s a neat spell I had learned for Voldemort which, while I wasn’t good enough at it to try it on its intended target, should have theoretically worked against the troll. I couldn’t cast it silently, but given the noise that the troll was making walking past me I only needed to whisper it to avoid Voldemort or Quirrel noticing.

“ _Obliviate._ ”

As a memory class charm, it’s surprisingly easy compared to Occlumency, but takes a lot of power. But I only needed to wipe a few seconds.

_Except me._

The troll stopped, reprocessing its orders, and turned around.

_Did that really work?_

Quirrel was distracted by Voldemort and thus didn’t react quickly enough to avoid loosely reenacting the _Puny God_ scene from _The Avengers._

**Wham!**

**Wham!**

**Wham!**

It looked very painful, seeing him getting smashed around like that. But hey, that’s what he planned to happen to Hermione or any other student who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I regret nothing.

But I should avoid him getting killed, otherwise Voldemort would just possess someone else and I won’t be able to predict anything. And some people might notice that I wasn’t at the feast. Also, murder is wrong, so I had to save him.

What did I do? I left the hall, took off the invisibility cloak, ran back in and aimed at the troll’s club with “ _WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA_ ” just as it was about to turn Quirrel into mush.

**Boink!**

“Oh my God Professor are you alright? I was just going to the bathroom and heard a scream, what is that monster? Did it attack you? How did it get in?”

And that’s when Dumbledore, Snape and McGonagall, who had also heard Quirrel’s scream, came rushing in to find me applying first aid spells to Quirrel next to a knocked out troll.

-HP-HP-HP-

“Harry, could you please explain why you weren’t at the feast?”

“Well, Professor, officially, I was trying to have some time alone, because my parents died 10 years ago, and then I heard Quirrel get attacked and just barely managed to save him. But the real story is, well, I don’t really know how to explain. You would have to have seen it to really understand.”

“I think I could very well understand, if you tell me what happened.”

“Actually,” I said pointing at the various gadgets in Dumbledore’s office around us, “I was going to ask if you happen to have a Pensieve. I’ve read about them, they seem like the kind of rare item you’d have, and I think it’d be best to show my memory of what happened.”

-HP-HP-HP-

“Alright, could you pause and replay that? That voice he called Lord, probably Voldemort, came from the turban. Either some sort of communications device or he’s keeping Voldemort’s spirit there. Since the same turban tried to read my mind on my first day here, I’m leaning towards the bodiless evil spirit theory.

“Now, here he mentioned that he needed a diversion lasting long enough to accomplish something. I can only think of three things Voldemort might want here: My death, your death, and whatever that Cerberus on the third floor is guarding. Since as far as he knew both of us were at the feast with everyone else, he was probably after the third floor.

“In hindsight, it was probably not the smartest idea to Obliviate the troll with no idea what’d happen, but when else do you get the opportunity to see how the Imperius and memory modification interact? It did end with both Quirrel and the troll, both potential dangers to everyone in the castle, both knocked out, so I think it worked out quite okay.”

After watching the entire sequence three times, we left the Pensieve.

“I’d say first priority is to figure out if Voldemort is here or just communicating with Quirrel. He’s currently unconscious in the infirmary so it should be possible to sneak in and see what’s under the turban. If he’s here, we need to figure out in what form, how he stays alive, and if there’s some way of permanently getting rid of him.”

-HP-HP-HP-

After Dumbledore confirmed my “Voldemort’s spirit in the turban” theory we spent multiple hours going over the theory of how a spirit like that could be fought against and on what we should do with Quirrel. In the end, Dumbledore told me that he’d have to do more research on bodiless spirits and that until he found a way to permanently destroy Voldemort, we should keep Quirrel under the belief that we think he was just attacked by a troll that inexplicably managed to get into Hogwarts, while informing all the trusted teachers that they should keep an eye on him. As long as he doesn’t realize that his cover is blown and the Philosopher's Stone is just barely out of reach, he should continue to pretend to be a harmless stuttering teacher. I hope Dumbledore finds what he needs soon, because I’m not quite comfortable with Quirrel staying here, but if Voldemort found out that we’re onto him he’d just abandon Quirrel and return on someone else’s head.

At that point it had gotten pretty late and I returned to Ravenclaw to get some rest, where I found Hermione waiting for me.

She cast _Muffliato_ , took a deep breath, and started shouting.

“HARRY JAMES POTTER, or whatever your real name is! Don’t you DARE do that EVER AGAIN! Do you have ANY IDEA how WORRIED I was??? You just LEFT without telling me why, and then I realized that the ONLY OTHER PERSON not there was the teacher working for VOLDEMORT!!! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!”

She really does get quite scary when she’s angry.

“Hermione, please, calm down! I know, I shouldn’t have left you worrying, but please, just let me explain!”

“Explain? EXPLAIN? You NEVER tell me ANYTHING until way too late! First you meet me and then you don’t tell me for MONTHS that you already know me because you’re from the FUTURE, we go to Hogwarts and you don’t bother to inform me beforehand that one of the teacher works for the WORST DARK LORD of the CENTURY, then you just SNEAK OFF to fight him on your own? If there’s anything else like that that you’re keeping from me you better tell me RIGHT NOW!”

“Okay, okay, I know, I’ve been keeping way too many secrets. I’ll explain as best as I can. When I first arrived in this time, I immediately knew that I’d have to defeat Voldemort somehow. So my first idea was to think back to everything I remembered about how he got defeated in my time, then try to get that done but better. So I had this idea, well, to bring together a group of remarkable people.”

“If you’re trying to calm me down with future reference jokes, forget about it.”

“Well, it really was my first plan. Remember all the people who played a major role in Voldemort’s defeat the first time around, get them together, defeat Voldemort. That’s pretty much what I did at the beginning, contacting people. Sirius, Remus, well, and you. Then I realized that repeating what happened isn’t really the best way to do it, a group of schoolkids shouldn’t really have to fight a bloody war. So I changed my plan to where I and Dumbledore will do most of the dirty work. I won’t lie, when we first met I did kinda see you as a character from a book, important for strategic reasons, but since then I got to know the real you, and I really like you, you’re kinda like a young sister to me, and I really really don’t want you to have half a dozen cases of almost dying before the age of sixteen, so please understand that I’m doing everything I can to keep you away from the danger. I know you’re worried about me, but I don’t really have a choice to not fight Voldemort, but you do. Please, don’t get involved more than you already are. I don’t know if I could ever live with myself if something happened to you because of me.”

Hermione turned from furious to shocked.

“Half a dozen cases of almost dying? Just how bad is it going to get?”

“Very bad, if I don’t prevent it. That’s why I have to do it. I could probably get a new identity and live in Australia, but I can’t just let a war happen here. I really hope I’ll be able to stop it. But if I fail, please, stay safe and get away.”

“So you want to fight, but you want me to just run away?”

“I’m a time traveler and the prophesied enemy of Voldemort, I really am the only one who can stop it, so I have to. You’re a twelve year old schoolkid, you don’t have to do anything. Just promise me that you won’t get yourself involved in anything dangerous and that if things go bad, if something happens to me, that you get you get out of here before it turns into a warzone, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, breaking down, “I promise that I’ll stay safe.”

“But please,” she cried between sobs, “don’t run off, leaving me worrying like that again.”

“It’s okay,” I tried to calm her, “I think I got things under control. I still have around four years before things got ugly in the other time, I will figure something by then, I promise. Chances are, it’ll all be fine.”

But right now, all I can do is hope that Dumbledore finds a way to get Voldemort out of Quirrel and permanently destroyed soon.


	16. Stargaze: Pegasus

**Chapter 16: Stargaze: Pegasus**

“You know, I really don’t think you’re supposed to be here this late,” Hermione said climbing up the stairs of the astronomy tower, “it’s 2 past midnight. You could get in serious trouble.”

“Eh, I won’t get caught, I got an invisibility cloak. Speaking of getting into trouble, what are you doing here? How did you even follow me?”

Hermione pulled out the map. “You were gone in the middle of the night, so I used this to find you. I thought we had agreed that you weren’t going to run off leaving me worrying any more. I’m disappointed, Harry.”

“I didn’t run off into danger. I couldn’t sleep so I took my cloak and went up here to look at the stars. They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

Hermione looked up, at the clear rural scottish night sky. Far from the next major city, and with the lights in Hogsmeade and Hogwarts mostly out this late, there was practically no light pollution obscuring the stunning view.

“Yes,” she said, “They are. We don’t really get to appreciate it in Astronomy class when we’re doing classwork.”

“True, we’re always so busy getting all the assignments done before the end of the class, we never have time to just enjoy the view.”

We were both silent for a while..

“Nature is beautiful,” I eventually mentioned, “and sometimes a little cruel. Most people live in big cities where they never even see their own galaxy. Even those who can enjoy a view like this, they can’t see the true beauty of it. The way the retina in the human eye works, there’s a layer of neurons and blood vessels in front of the actual rods that detect light. Photons travel millions of lightyears, manage to hit an observing eye, only to collide with a nerve fiber less than a millimeter away from the cell that could’ve sensed it.”

“It does sound a little tragic, if you say it that way. To come that far but to fail so close...”

“A fascinating quirk of biology. All vertebrates have eyes with inverted retinas. But cephalopods evolved their eyes completely independently, and they have retinas the right way around.”

Hermione turned around and took a closer look at my face, noticing the lack of glasses. “Don’t tell me you did..”

I nodded. “I asked Professor McGonagall last week, and finally managed a partial animagus transformation on my eyes. Not as useful as I’d hoped, I’d get blinded way too easily by anything bright if I did this in a combat situation, but it does make the night sky absolutely stunning. I can even see polarization a bit. Might be useful if I go for a career in quantum optics.”

Hermione laughed. “Yeah, it might be useful in that case. But as much as you’re trying to downplay it, I am a bit jealous that you can see better than I can.”

“True, it’s a shame this isn’t something everyone can do.”

A few minutes of silent stargazing later, I pointed at the Pegasus constellation.

“You see the faint star on the right of the square? In 1995, astronomers noticed that its color shifted a tiny bit every few days. It was barely noticeable, but regular like clockwork. They did the calculations, and concluded that the only explanation was a half Jupiter sized planet orbiting around it, pulling it back and forth and causing the shift.”

“You know, you always praise me for having an amazing memory, just because I only have to read a book twice to memorize it all. But then you remember things that haven’t even happened yet in vivid detail.”

“Well, it was the first planet outside our solar system ever found. 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics. They found thousands of other planets later on, they’re apparently quite common. To be honest, I only really remember the details because someone made a catchy song about it. Pegasi, 51b, planet discovered, around a far, main sequence star, and I forgot the rest.”

“Do you think that with planets being common we might not be alone in the universe?”

“Maybe. I only know vaguely what’s going to be discovered the next twenty-five years or so, that’s as far as it goes for me, and there wasn’t any alien life discovered then. But it’s possible. Thinking about it, if aliens do exist, do you think they’d have magic?”

“It’d be weird, if muggles made first contact and discovered alien magic before human magic.”

“It’d also be weird if aliens didn’t have it. It could also save us if they turned out to be hostile like hollywood aliens.”

“You think wizards on broomsticks could fight off UFOs?”

“Maybe. Or maybe something as simple as a jar of everlasting fire could be just what NASA needs to power a space fighter.”

-HP-HP-HP-

It felt great, just watching the stars and talking about sci-fi and things far far away and just not thinking about Voldemort for hours. The day after, though...

Note to self: Don’t spend the entire night stargazing when you have Defense class the next day. You will regret it.

Fortunately, nothing worse than losing points for not paying attention occurred, but it was a miserable day.

-HP-HP-HP-

“Potter,” Snape greeted me as I entered Dumbledore’s office, “the Headmaster just told the true story of the troll incident. Be assured that I wouldn’t have believed it if it had been anyone but you.”

“Thanks.”

“It wasn’t meant as a compliment, Potter. Nobody else would have been crazy enough.”

“I try. So, what’s the issue?”, I asked Dumbledore.

“I have made some progress determining the nature of Quirinus’s possession issue. I ran some tests, as far as I can tell it’s impossible to get Voldemort out of him.”

“Then we lock up both,” Snape demanded.

“Unfortunately, while we can’t separate the two, Voldemort could choose to leave as a spirit at any time. The only thing stopping him from escaping beyond our reach is his assumption that he has not been discovered yet, and his unwillingness to abandon his mission.”

“Any progress figuring out a way to capture or harm a spirit like that?”, I inquired.

“I found a spell that might be able to stop him from leaving his host for a few seconds,'' Dumbledore mentioned. “As for harming or even killing him, nothing so far. But I know a lot more about his nature than last week.”

“So we’re just going to keep the Dark Lord in the castle until we find something?”, Snape asked sharply.

“Looks like that’s the plan, unless you can think of something else.”

“One point from Ravenclaw for disrespectful language towards a teacher, Potter.”

“Oh come on, stop it. Out there,” I pointed at the door, “In the castle we’re teacher and student. You can stride around and take points all you want there. But here, we’re co-conspirators planning the defeat of the Dark Lord Voldemort. Or at least that’s how I see it. Now, what’s the backup plan for the worst-case scenario, Voldemort manages to get out of here despite our efforts?”

“Should Voldemort escape, regain a body and make moves to gather his followers, I will reassemble the Order of the Phoenix.”

“And I’ll probably be the spy again.”

“Do we have a plan in case to defeat a group of Death Eaters threatening the country?”

“Let us hope it won’t come to that, Harry.”

“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. And the worst is another full scale war like in the 70s. I’ve tried to nudge some things so that if something like that happens, we’re a bit better off. For example, I asked Professor Flitwick to run the dueling club so that everyone gets a chance to learn to defend themselves against other wizards regardless of how good or bad the annual Defence professor is.”

“I would have thought that it was just to show off, with that show duel with Malfoy, Potter?”

“That too. I also spent the last two years making all kinds of plans and strategies for all kinds of possible scenarios, and I hope we won’t have to use any of them.”

Mostly ripping off ideas from internet authors from another universe. Interdimensional copyright isn’t a thing, right?

“It saddens me that you’d spend your time planning war at your age.”

“Yeah, it’s not great, but I got to do something. Boy of the Prophecy and all. Anyway,” I pulled out a folder from my bag and opened one page, “here’s an example of what I came up with. Example plan #15, Code name Celestial Canidae.

Situation: Voldemort returned to the power of a very powerful dark wizard, practically impossible to beat in a duel, and has a small army of loyal followers. We have a small resistance group.

Assumption one: We have the ability to protect a house with sufficiently good defenses to withstand an attack by Voldemort by at least ten minutes, and we have some monetary resources available.

Step one of the plan: Find an empty island a decent distance away from anything important, that muggles won’t miss if we hide it.

Step two: Build a simple house there, fortify it as well as possible, and block apparition and portkeys in as large an area around it as we can. As far as everyone on our side is concerned, that’s the new headquarters.

Step three: Find a set of vanishing cabinets that allow transport, and put one on the island and one in another safe location as escape route. That part of the plan has to stay a secret for everyone but the most trusted of us to make sure that Voldemort won’t find out about it, even if he has a traitor in our group.

Step four: Once the island is protected well enough, use it as meeting place for everyone on our side.

Step five: Eventually make sure information about the location and the time of the next meeting leaks to Voldemort in a believable way.

Assumption two: Voldemort would probably attempt to wipe us all out by attacking our headquarters with everything he has. Since it’s an island with apparition and portkeys blocked, he’ll have to attack on brooms.

Step six: The moment we notice Voldemort is attacking our meeting, we evacuate everyone through the vanishing cabinet. The defenses have to hold just a few minutes for that.”

“Let me guess,” Snape interrupted, “the moment everyone’s out you plan to unleash fiendfyre on the Dark Lord and his army, who can’t apparate away?”

“No, fiendfyre is too slow. My plan was to blow the entire island up. We fill the island with tons of highly explosive materials, the most volatile potions you can find, maybe we could get some dynamite and see if duplicating charms work on it, then once everyone of us is evacuated and Voldemort is just about to break in we set it all off.”

Snape nodded. “That works too.”

“Harry… You can’t be serious.”

“No, Sirius is my new father. Sorry. Well, if there’s one thing Voldemort deserves, it’s a massive explosion in his face. The only way to kill a powerful dark wizard is to finish him in one shot before he can react and defend himself. And if you don’t think it’d work, I also have another plan: Operation Gandhi.”

“Are you serious, Potter? You think you can peacefully protest the Dark Lord?”

“No, it’s exactly the same as Celestial Canidae, except that we use the current political chaos in Soviet Russia to pilfer a small nuclear bomb, and use that.”

“Harry!”

-HP-HP-HP-

Okay, maybe I should have presented one of my more sensible plans I ripped off serious fanfics instead of jumping straight to CC/OpG.

“Hey, Harry! Could you help me with something?”

“Sure, Hermione! What’s the problem?”

“I’m trying to start a movement to demand freedom for house elves. What do you think would be a good slogan? I just can’t come up with a decent acronym.”

“Okay, umm, first of all, don’t.”

“What? Why?”

“As far as everyone knows, or believes to know, the house elves are happy the way things are.”

“Only some of them,” Hermione immediately interrupted, “and even those only because they don’t know a better life!”

“True, but it doesn’t matter. Starting a movement, that’s politics, and in politics it’s not important what’s true, but rather what people think is true.”

“Then we got to tell them! That’s exactly what I’m trying to do!”

“Bad idea. The majority of the population assumes that the house elf situation is fine, but doesn’t actually know any house elves. The part of the population that has elves and could know has a strong interest to keep things the way they are. That part is also where most of the money is.”

“But it doesn’t matter where the money is, what matters is what all people think, and most people don’t profit off house elve slavery so if I inform them it’s wrong, they’ll listen!”

I got a piece of paper from my bag and scribbled down some numbers.

“Let’s do a quick calculation. The population of magical Britain is about 10 thousand people, including squibs and muggle family members that know about magic. Assuming an average of 2 per household, that’s 5 thousand households as potential customers for the _Daily Prophet_. At 5 knuts a copy, dirt cheap, their potential revenue if every household had a subscription is 25 thousands knuts a day, or about 50 galleons. Let’s assume no printing or distribution cost, because magic. Given the amount of articles and the amount of work to write each article, there’s at least 100 work-hours of researching, writing, editing, taking pictures, interviews, et cetera, in each daily edition. Which gives the typical _Prophet_ employee an hourly wage below half a galleon, before taxes. The _Prophet_ is a private company, they don’t get government subsidies. But they’re still the only paper because they were cheaper than anything else. So, given these numbers, how can they possibly run the company and pay their journalists a decent wage on 50 galleons a day?”

“I don’t see how that’s important.”

“Look, the math doesn’t work out. Unlike their name suggests, they can’t possibly make a daily profit. And why would the owners keep the company if it keeps making losses? It doesn’t make sense. Unless they get something else out of it.”

“You’re not saying… They wouldn’t. They’re a newspaper.”

“They wouldn’t, what? Compromise their journalistic integrity and print whatever their owners, eleven of the richest wizards in the country, all from old families, want? Such as ‘Crazy muggleborn wants to free house elves - Doesn’t even know that house elves like to work’? Because that’s exactly what would happen if you started a movement called ‘Free The Elves’, and if you were lucky.”

“And what if I was unlucky?”

“Then it’d be the other m-word. No, if you want to have a serious chance to free the elves, you need to take a different approach. You need to make them work for you, against their own interest, without realizing it.”

“And how do I do that?”

“Here’s how I’d do it. Start with a simple message that virtually everyone can agree on. Let’s say ban torture. It’s already practically illegal, but there’s no blanket ban so far, so it’d be something people who don’t know much about politics would support immediately while politicians would see it as easy publicity to support you with no negative consequences. Then, once your movement picked up some momentum, say how unfair it is that a lot of legal protections that apply to humans don’t apply to people who are almost human, like veela, everyone loves the veela. Demand that it becomes illegal to torture veela, then expand to centaurs, goblins, all the other almost-human intelligent beings, and nobody can really speak out about you because nobody wants to be seen as supporting torture. By the time you add house elves to the list it would seem like an afterthought, and the rich house elf owners already publicly supported your movement and it’d be awkward to retract that support then. That’ll make it illegal to abuse house elves, and nobody would even know it was the goal all along. Then add other human rights to all intelligent beings once you got a good reputation and lots of public support. It’d be a pretty massive undertaking though, so it’d take years until you got to a point to demand fair pay for elves, but it’s better than putting a giant target on you back saying ‘ruin my reputation please, I’m a threat to your profits’.”


	17. Larceny, Lies and Legal Loopholes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before this chapter the story was FFN exclusive.

**Chapter 17: Larceny, Lies and Legal Loopholes** ****

Breakfast in the Great Hall, the last day before the Christmas Holidays. I, Fred and George had spent some time preparing a little mischief, they to impress Padfoot and Moony and I to build a closer friendship with two of the most skilled potential magic gadget inventors in Hogwarts. Seriously, they’re great at coming up with things, and if only I could get them to apply themselves to useful things instead of silly pranks they could accomplish so much…

The chatter in the hall diminished rapidly when the day’s post arrived with no less than three dozen owls carrying howlers, spreading out across the hall to various random students of all houses and years, and even Dumbledore and Snape got one, his face turning visibly furious that someone would send _him_ a howler.

Everyone expected some angry tirade, but nobody (except us who created it) expected the even worse horror the howlers released:

_**Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, but the very next day…** _

There is no escaping this song. Not even at Hogwarts.

It had been surprisingly easy to buy a few stacks of howler paper, a magical record player and a record of the piece and let all the howlers record while playing the disc. The difficult part had been getting them to play synchronized, but George had figured that part out. Why did we get a bunch of howlers to play christmas music? Cause why not. It’s unexpected, doesn’t hurt anyone, Sirius found it hilarious to send Snivellus a howler and it demonstrates that much of the stuff wizards use could be used to do many more things with a little out of the box thinking.

Most importantly, in setting up, recording, packaging and addressing this many howlers I taught the twins the value of organizing production in an assembly line. Knowledge they’re going to need if they’re ever going to set up a business selling prank items and/or actually useful gadgets.

The real surprise was another letter I got that morning…

_Harry Potter_

_I have something for you to see. On the fourth floor in the east wing, the third room on the right._

_Come alone._

Well, that’s interesting. Anonymous letters are usually my modus operandi.

“Hey, Fred, George? The music sync was perfect. Great job.”

“Yeah, it worked way better than expected! Are you going to be at Hogwarts for the holidays?”

“No, I’m going to be celebrating at home with Sirius and Remus, like last year.”

“We’re going to stay at Hogwarts, our parents are in Romania, with Charlie.”

“Ok, well, if you want, I’m sure Sirius would have nothing against a few extra guests for the holidays. Our place is huge.”

“You’re inviting us to spend Christmas with Padfoot and Moony?”

“Sure, why not? Just promise me that the house will still be standing afterward. By the way, could I borrow the map for a moment? I need to check something out.”

“Sure, here.”

“Okay, bye! I solemnly swear I am up to no good...”

Let’s see, fourth floor east wing, there’s only one person there.

_Albus Dumbledore._

What’s he doing there?

-HP-HP-HP-

Third room on the left. According to the map, it’s Dumbledore in here. But according to my eyes peeking into the room, it’s empty, except for a giant mirror.

The Mirror of Erised.

Of course. The way I’ve been behaving, making school-wide changes and preparing for war as a first-year, I’m completely different from what he expected of me. Of course he wants to find out more about what kind of person I am. And what better method than by invisibly observing my reaction to seeing my own heart’s desire? And of course he doesn’t know that I know he’s there, since I never mentioned the map to him and left the part where I used it out of the pensieve memory of Quirrel and the Troll. And since I’m wearing The Cloak of Invisibility, Deathly Hallow and all, he probably doesn’t yet know I’m here. He’s probably reading a book or something while waiting for me to show up.

So, should I go in and take a look at the mirror?

Wait a moment. Plothole detected. If the mirror is here, and Dumbledore is here, then what the hell is guarding the Philosopher’s Stone?

Only one way to find out!

-HP-HP-HP-

“ _Alohomora!_ ”

-HP-HP-HP-

“Sleep, Fluffy , sleep!

Thy father tends the sheep,

Thy mother shakes the branches small,

Whence happy dreams in showers fall.

Sleep, Fluffy, sleep!”

-HP-HP-HP-

“ _Incendio!_ ”

-HP-HP-HP-

“ _Alohomora!_ ”

Of course, that didn’t work. Let’s see. Looks like a relatively simple mechanical lock, but charmed against opening charms. The keys are enchanted with wings, which is a lot more difficult to do the more other enchantments are on them, so they’re probably normal mechanical keys and don’t have a magical signature detected by the lock. Let’s try lockpicks. Because of course I have some, I spent two years preparing for every situation I could imagine, and it’s not like the size of my pockets is limited.

-HP-HP-HP-

Bingo! Now, the chess set…

“Sirius Black. Hey, Sirius, could you please quickly apparate over to the Grangers and give the two-way mirror to John?”

-HP-HP-HP-

“Hi, how are things going? Yeah, I’m fine, Hermione’s fine too, she’s not with me though. Could you please help me for a moment? Turn on the computer, I’ll explain while it boots up.”

-HP-HP-HP-

“Bishop to D6, and checkmate! Thanks!”

McGonagall’s animated statues 0, Fritz! Chess Software for MS-DOS, 1.

Looks like magical AI development isn’t quite keeping up with Moore’s law.

-HP-HP-HP-

I could’ve Wingardium Leviosa-Boinked the Troll here but it wasn’t even necessary, one of the twins’ dungbombs made its sense of smell useless, and it had no chance of seeing through my cloak. Silenced boots FTW.

Now, the fire challenge. Purple flames on the way out, looks like normal flames with a color change charm on them, a normal flame freezing charm or fire resistance potion would get me out. On the way forward, though….

After looking up in both the Black and the Hogwarts library what the fire I remembered from Snape’s room in the books could be, I’m sure it’s _Schwarzflamm._

A magical fire that was invented in the late medieval period by german wizards, it’s several thousands of degrees hot and has the absolutely fascinating property, from a physics point of view, that it barely radiates any heat at all. You can stand right next to it and only feel a little warm but anything that touches the black flame is toast. Very useful for blacksmiths who want to heat up exotic magical metals very quickly, and practically impossible to get through without a very specialized and difficult to brew potion.

Which is what’s probably in the small bottle on the table here. The logic puzzle checks out, my poison detector Remus bought for me half a year ago agrees with the puzzle on where the poisons are, so here goes nothing...

-HP-HP-HP-

Okay, so I’m through the fire and on the other side is a big safe, covered in glowing runes.

So this is Dumbledore’s protection when he doesn’t use the mirror.

“Kreacher! Could you please help me analyze what’s going on here?”

After about half an hour of careful examination, we determined that the safe is protected through a myriad of overlapping runic circles, probably drawing power from the castle itself to make it practically impossible to open or damage the safe without getting blown to bits. Disarming this would take a skilled curse-breaker weeks, and I have only skimmed the basic runes books.

We did determine that it’s safe to touch, although I have no idea where Kreacher got that guinea pig from, and we did figure out that it doesn’t react to house-elf magic being used in its vicinity.

Let’s think, what it something Dumbledore would never expect Voldemort to do and therefore would not guard against properly?

“So, Kreacher, you can apparate in and out, you can’t side-along people because they would get splinched by Hogwarts’s anti-apparition field, but you can carry objects, right? Do you think you could apparate the safe, let’s say, one meter to the left?”

“Kreacher will try!”

_Crack!_

Honestly I just asked him if he thought he could do it without it activating anything, but he jumped straight to trying, and it _worked._ If Kreacher can move the safe around in this room, it’s likely that any elf could also apparate the entire thing out of the castle entirely.

Pretty big security hole if you ask me. Voldemort would probably never think of using an elf, he made exactly the same mistake in his inferi cave after all, but Quirrel was a Ravenclaw and he might think of it. So assuming that Voldemort and Quirrel together are at least as capable as I am, the Stone isn’t safe right now.

Even assuming that Quirrel isn’t as smart the Stone isn’t safe, because I am right here and I think I might borrow it. I mean, it’s the _Philosopher’s Stone._ Gold and Elixir of Life sound like things that could come in really useful. And if I take it now, make some gold over the holidays and ask Kreacher to apparate it back in afterwards, nobody’s going to notice, right? And Dumbledore would be easier to convince to upgrade the security here if I can demonstrate how easy it is to bypass.

“Kreacher, could you move the safe into the basement of Grimmauld?”

_Crack!_

_Crack!_

“It is there, Young Master Harry.”

Holy shit, I just stole the Philosopher’s Stone. Maybe I should leave a note, so Dumbledore doesn’t think Voldemort did it.

_To: Professor Dumbledore_

_Do you know what a Penetration Test is? It’s when you get a good guy to pretend to be a bad guy trying to defeat your defenses to see if you have any major flaws in your security._

_I hereby rate your little adventure course:_

_Originality: Acceptable_

_Entertainment value: Exceeds Expectations_

_Actual Security: Poor_

_Safety: Troll_

_I’ll safeguard this artefact in a more secure place until the security here is seriously improved or the original owner is contacted._

-HP-HP-HP-

One fire resistance potion, sneaking past a troll, flambéing a plant and singing a lullaby later, I was back on the fourth floor.

According to the map, Dumbledore’s still here, and I’ve let him wait long enough, so let’s see what he wants me to see and take a look at the mirror. To be quite honest, I’m curious myself what my desire is. Infinite gold? Voldemort dead? Me being a powerful wizard? World domination?

I should probably prepare something believable I can tell Dumbledore first. Something that fits my established character of unusually smart, but ultimately good eleven year old hero. How about I see myself grown up, in a research lab, working with the world’s best spellcrafters, potioneers, scientists and engineers working to solve the world’s problems. Cancer? Magic cure disguised as nanotech mass-produced. Energy? Magic power generators disguised as fusion plants deployed worldwide. Overpopulation? Here’s an Earth-like exoplanet being terraformed. Magic getting revealed? It’s indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced technology. Yeah, that seems like an okay desire.

Now, let’s take a look at that mirror…

Oh.

Right.

In hindsight it should’ve been obvious.

_I'm going to be dragged into a freaking civil war._

_And I'm probably never going to see my actual family again._

_Panicking is totally appropriate in this situation._

My mother. My father. My sister. And my little brother, as annoying as he always was, my heart desired to have them all back. My home, just like I left it in 2019.

_Calm down. Occlumency up._

They probably don’t even exist in this dimension. If my parents do exist, I and the existence of magic probably butterfly effected them enough already that they might not even meet each other.

_Remember: Your mind is surrounded by barriers._

_Solid, impenetrable barriers._

The mirror shows us our greatest desire, no matter if it is achievable or not. And sometimes it shows us that uncomfortable truth that we never really wanted to acknowledge.

_Calm down! This is not the appropriate time for panicking!_

When I recovered from narrowly avoiding an emotional breakdown resulting from years of blatantly ignoring my status as dimensionally misplaced quasi-orphan, I noticed Dumbledore standing next to me, obscuring the mirror with a conjured mist.

“Harry. Are you alright?”

“Yeah. I guess so. That’s an- um- _very_ dangerous mirror you have there. Not something you’d want students to just stumble upon.”

“True, although I suppose the majority of your classmates would see something a lot less impactful than what you saw. May I ask what it was that affected you so severely?”

“I saw my family.” And I didn’t even have to use my prepared lie.

Dumbledore looked unsurprised and nodded. “Lily and James were good people, Harry. Two of the bravest students I ever had the pleasure to teach. But unfortunately, they have been dead for over ten years. This mirror shows-”

“Not your face but your heart’s desire. I know. It says it right there.”

“Not everyone recognizes mirror writing immediately.”

“Yeah, I guess I do. The mirror shows us what we want, but it’s not always possible, so I shouldn’t get stuck on it. Got it. By the way, how are we going to do this whole fighting Voldemort thing over the holidays? I’m going to be home, so if anything happens, Quirrel finds a way into the third floor or you find a spell that’d work against him, you could reach me over the floo. Our address is Seriously Grim Old Place. Sirius likes his puns.”

He nodded. “That should work. Merry Christmas, Harry.”

-HP-HP-HP-

On carriage to the train back, I decided to tell Hermione about my latest adventure.

“So let me get this straight. Professor Dumbledore had the _Philosopher’s Stone_ hidden on the third floor corridor as bait for Voldemort?”

“Yes.”

“And you decided to test if his security was adequate to stop Voldemort from actually getting it?”

“Yes. And I managed to get through in less than one hour, without him noticing.”

“So you decided to _steal it?_ ”

“Well, it wasn’t safe where it was, I’ll give it back as soon as he implements decent security, and honestly, could you resist the chance to do some tests on it? It’s the most famous alchemical catalyst in the world!”

Hermione thought about it for a moment. “You’re right, if I’m honest with myself I wouldn’t resist the chance either. I know that stealing it is wrong, but I’m just too curious on what secrets it might hold. Harry James Potter, you corrupted me!”, she shouted in mock-anger.

We both laughed about it for a moment, then she asked: “Is there anything else you might want to tell me?”

“Uh, yes. Fred and George are going to stay at Grimmauld for the holidays.”

“Fred and George Weasley? The biggest trouble-makers in all of Hogwarts? Are you serious?”

“No, Sirius is the biggest trouble-maker. Well, they want to meet, so I invited the twins over.”

-HP-HP-HP-

At home at Grimmauld, we immediately visited the safe containing the Philosopher’s Stone in the basement. The runes had stopped glowing, confirming my theory of them drawing power from Hogwarts, which obviously doesn’t work outside of the castle. Typical Dumbledore, very powerful protection with a big fatal flaw: The Fidelius was supposed to be impenetrable, but Pettigrew’s treason negated it. The blood protection was supposed to protect me at the Dursleys, but it only worked against Voldemort and not against anything else, like for example the Dursleys. After carefully opening the safe, we found two things on the inside: A red gemstone and a very old looking book.

“I can’t believe it!”, Hermione exclaimed. “It’s Flamel’s personal research notes!”

“It’s in French.”

“Yes! The original from when Flamel first worked with the Stone!”

“Hermione, I don’t know French.”

“Oh. I guess I’ll read it and tell you the important things?”

“Okay, and I’ll-”

 **WHAM!** , I got interrupted by a loud noise from upstairs.

“-make sure that our guest’s behaviour doesn’t go out of hand. After that I’ll run some tests on the Stone.”

-HP-HP-HP-

Okay, let’s recap what I found out about the Stone. Density 5.6 g/cm³, fascinating crystal structure, color is ruby red, I don’t have an electron microscope right now but I do have something else…

“Harry! THAT’S NOT A TOY! What are you even doing in our dentistry?”

Okay, maybe I should have asked for permission _before_ scanning the Philosopher's Stone with the Grangers’ dental X-Ray.

-HP-HP-HP-

I’d just returned from the Grangers’ dentistry after finally getting the X-Rays done, when I was met by a rather unusual sight: Our redheaded guests getting chased through the entrance hall of Grimmauld by a brightly glowing red-green striped dog.

“What the…?”

“They wanted to make things more festive”, a red-green haired Remus Lupin commented. “Apparently their formula for hair coloring potions works a bit too well on Sirius’s animagus form.”

Maybe inviting the Weasley brothers to the same house as the remaining Marauders wasn’t exactly my brightest idea. At least things won’t be boring these holidays.

-HP-HP-HP-

“..and I had to convince your mother to let me X-Ray the Stone. So that’s what I did, and what did you find out, Hermione?”

“This book is amazing. Unfortunately it doesn’t include the instructions for making the Stone, so we can’t make our own one. There are instructions for the Elixir of Life, but it’s a bit of a let-down. Apparently Nicholas Flamel himself spread a lot of misinformation on what it could do, he wrote here that he regrets how much he foolishly bragged about his accomplishment in his youth. If I translated this century old French correctly, the Elixir is essentially a very good anti-aging potion and little more.”

“So Voldemort couldn’t use it to create a new body?”

That might explain why Dumbledore used such miserable security, if there was never a big threat of Voldemort using it in the first place.

“No, I don’t think so. And there’s more: It apparently creates a sort of dependency. If you start taking it, you need to take a dose every month or you die. One of Flamel’s apprentices died at the age of 65 after he lost his bottle of Elixir while traveling, he’d have lived for longer if he had never started taking it in the first place. This is why the Flamels decided to not give more people access to it.”

Now I’m a bit more concerned about the security, why would Dumbledore be this careless with the lives of his friends? Unless the Flamels have more Stones than just the one, of course.

“So Elixir isn’t that great, but what about the lead to gold?”

“Nicholas Flamel writes it’s as simple as letting the Stone touch the lead, and it turns into gold. He successfully transmuted small amounts, like below one gram, as demonstrations, but he never dared larger amounts because apparently the gold is cursed. He tried to find and remove the curse for years, but never managed it. He gave up on it centuries ago, when his wife Pernelle convinced him that it was too dangerous. His main source of wealth has been other, less famous alchemical work, like the dragon’s blood project he did with Professor Dumbledore.”

Cursed gold… What’s next, is the submersible Durmstrang ship going to pay London a visit, filled with inferi pirates, to steal it?

-HP-HP-HP-

“I’m not that comfortable about this, Harry. Are you sure we won’t get terribly cursed?”

“Don’t worry, Hermione, it should be safe. It’s just a tenth of a gram of lead in this petri dish, a safe amount according to Flamel, I rigged it to drop on the Stone when this alarm clock rings which I’m going to set to ten minutes, then we’ll leave, come back in twenty minutes, and see what happened. Sirius and the others are all shopping in Diagon and won’t come back for an hour.”

“But do you really think it’s a good idea to make gold with this?”

“If there’s a small chance we find a safe way to unlimited money, it’s worth it. Imagine how easy it’d be to free the house elves, we could just buy them all, and give them the option to work for us or go free and work for whoever they wanted to.”

“Suppose we did that, what would we do with all those elves?”

“Well, how about we open a Chocolate factory?”

“You’re not Willy Wonka.”

“Well, if you don’t like that idea, I could always hire them to work in my underground secret villain lair.”

“WHAT?”

“Well, to be honest, it would be pretty despicable of me. Downright gru-some.”

Okay, when she smacked me for that I really deserved it, it was a terrible pun. In my defense she was literally the only person in this world who’d get it, so I couldn’t _not_ tell it.

“Okay, fine. Unlimited money would be pretty nice to have.”

“Good. Let’s stop joking around and start working on it. Experiment #1, set up and ready. Let’s do it!”

-HP-HP-HP-

That experiment worked quite beautifully. No curse on us as far as we can tell, a tenth of a gram of what appears to be genuine gold secured in a thick glass vial, and once we get the pictures of the camera I macgyvered to trigger with the alarm developed we can take a look at how the Stone worked its magic.

Of course, nobody develops film on Christmas Eve, so I’ll have to wait until I can get the pictures. Oh what I’d give for a smartphone with built in digital camera. Screw the 90s. So, it looks like our alchemy hobby might have to be put on hold for a few days.

-HP-HP-HP-

“Oh, hi, Ron, Fred, George. Mind if you help me and Sirius prepare dinner?”

Cooking christmas dinner for me, Sirius, Remus, the three Weasley guests, Hermione and her parents and I think Arabella is going to arrive in the evening too, that’s turning out to be quite a bit of work.

“Harry, could you pass the butter?” asked Hermione working on the pudding.

“Just say the magic words.”

“Please?”

“Actually, I was thinking more along _Wingardium Leviosa..._ there you go.”

“Thanks. And _Wingardium Leviosa…_ ”

While Hermione levitated the flour towards her, the three Weasley brothers just stared.

“Did you just...”

“Do magic...”

“Outside school?”

“Isn’t that, like, forbidden?”

“Are we really out of school?”, I asked in reply.

“Well, we’re at your home, aren’t we?”

“True. Now, riddle me this: Are the two really mutually exclusive?”

“Hey,” Ron exclaimed after a few seconds of thought, “didn’t you mention something about getting homeschooled before Hogwarts?”

“Ten points to Gryffindor. Yes, there’s a system that allows children to cast magic at home if they’re homeschooled, and we never did the paperwork to cancel that. The thing is, you need a tutor who has a teaching license to file for homeschooling, and those are generally pretty expensive. But we got lucky, we got Remus Lupin aka Mr. Moony here, who happens to have the right paperwork. Before he tutored me he used to have trouble finding employment, something pretty rare amongst skilled tutors. Of course, now that we’re at Hogwarts he spends most of his time with the British Lycanthropy Association organizing portkeys for werewolves who want to skip the full moon, but today he’s here and he’s still legally our tutor so as long as that’s the case, my home is our school,” Hermione explained.

“Wow. So you found a way around the underage magic rule?”, aked Fred in amazement.

I replied: “Well, legally we’re only supposed to do magic when Remus is around, but it’s not like the Ministry can actually track him, so we can pretty much do whatever we want at home. Of course, given how rampant bribery is in the Ministry it’s not very surprising that there’s loopholes giving rich kids unfair advantages.”

“Yeah, not surprising”, Hermione sneered. Maybe I should remind her that our current plan is not to bring down the bourgeoisie, but to become part of it through alchemy-gold? It’s a much preferable choice, especially since capitalism is going to win the Cold War in about 24 hours from now.

The three Weasley brothers whispered something to each other, then George asked the obvious question: “So, is there any chance Mr. Moony here might tutor us too?”

“Well, you know, usually personal tutoring services are very expensive, but in this case I’m sure that if I asked politely, he’d be fine doing some lessons in magical pranking over the holidays for, let’s say, one knut the hour?”

I really shouldn’t encourage the Weasley twins and their younger apprentice to engage in full prank war against Sirius and Remus, but I need something to keep all of them busy and happy while I and Hermione figure out the secrets of the Philosopher’s Stone.

At least I have their promises that they won’t do anything that might bring down the house. Small consolation.


	18. Elemental Experimentation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Philosopher's Stone works in mysterious ways

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: I'm really sorry that it took this long to write this chapter. I was pretty busy studying for my chemistry exam.

**Chapter 18: Elemental Experimentation**

Christmas was nice. Lots of presents were given and received, mostly books regarding friends from Ravenclaw.

Hermione gave me a VHS of Back to the Future II with a note asking about my 2015. I'm not quite comfortable sharing too much information though, I have absolutely no idea how I'd even begin explaining the entire "fictional universe" issue. So I summed it up as "no flying cars, but Biff was spot on".

Unfortunately I didn't get the electron microscope that I asked Sirius to buy me the day before, but I did get an ever-full water bottle, which could be useful.

I had also sent Dumbledre some socks and Snape a copy of John D. Clark's Ignition!, a history of the most volatile chemicals known to mugglekind.

Fred and George got books about economics and I got pranked in return (no details, sorry, very embarrassing).

And that was pretty much it. No mysterious packages with powerful artefacts and unsigned notes. And no penny from the Dursleys. They must've forgotten me.

-HP-HP-HP-

A day later, we were surprised with Albus Dumbledore rushing out of our Floo. So he noticed that something was missing. Took long enough.

"Merry Christmas, Sirius, always good to see you again, can I see Harry?"

"I'm here. Hello, Professor! Did anything happen?"

Dumbledore cast a complicated looking privacy spell. Or at least I think that that's what he did.

"Harry, the Philosopher's Stone is gone. Did you have anything to do with it?", Dumbledore asked calmly. (Yes, calmly. Not shouting at me or anything like that.)

"Short answer, yes, and it's safe. But before you say anything, just hear me out: You had it guarded by a cerberus, which any muggle proficient in mythology knows are vulnerable to music, a plant that anyone with basic herbology knowledge knows is vulnerable to fire and any muggle with a blowtorch could bypass, a locked door with the key in the same room which any muggle with lockpicks could get through, a game of chess that any muggle computer could easily defeat nowadays, a troll which any muggle with a gun could kill, and a riddle that anyone with basic logic could pass. I'm sorry, but given the fact that a well equipped muggle could get through the entire thing in ten minutes, I just couldn't not do anything about it. Not when our entire plan was based on Quirrel not getting through."

Dumbledore sighed.

"The first traps weren't supposed to be secure, they were supposed to slow down Voldemort so I could catch him. The final chamber was supposed to be impenetrable. Of course, I had not considered the possibility of an elf who is not one of the Hogwarts elves apparating in. Despite that unfortunate oversight on my side, it was highly irresponsible of you to just make off with the Stone instead of telling me about the security flaw you found."

"Look, I know it wasn't ideal, but I think the problem was that you didn't tell me about the entire plan. You just told me that it was secure, and initially I took your word for it, but when I tested it what I found wasn't what I expected. If I had known that the previous tasks were supposed to delay only, then I'd have known that the house elf apparition was the only real flaw, but because I didn't know that I assumed that the entire thing was just bad security all the way through, I assumed that fixing that would be a big project that would take a lot of time and that we should do after the holidays, and so I decided to move the bait into my own secure location. And, well, when I found out just what it was I had there I couldn't not want to spend the holidays examining it. That's just the Ravenclaw curiosity in me. I'm sorry for not telling you, I wanted to send an owl earlier but didn't know what to say."

"Maybe you could have begun by telling me where you put the Stone."

Wait a moment!

"What was the first thing I said when I entered your office?"

"You asked if you were in trouble for leaving the Dursleys. And while I appreciate the caution, that wasn't really necessary. I have taken steps to make it impossible for anyone to impersonate me through polyjuice."

"Good to know. Kreacher, please tell Professor Dumbledore here the secret. Correct Horse Battery Staple."

Kreacher appeared, spent a minute casting elf magic on me, then repeated the procedure on Dumbledore, who watched with curiosity.

"Okay, Kreacher does not think Young Master Harry is being coerced, and Kreacher cannot detect anything suspicious on anyone present, so Kreacher is allowed to say it. _Harry James Potter's Secret Room is the third room on the right in the basement of Number 12, Grimmauld Place._ "

"A Fidelius?"

"Of course. Sirius knows how to cast it. It was a bit tricky to get it to work properly using an elf as secret keeper, but with him under strict orders to not tell people unless I ask him to it should be pretty safe."

Actually I've had that room for quite some time, just in case I needed to hide something.

While we walked downstairs to the lab room, I mentioned some of the things I had found out.

"By the way, I did make some interesting observations. Take a look at this."

"What is it?"

"An X-ray image of the Stone. Did you know it has a hexagonal internal crystal structure that can't be seen from the outside? Fascinating, isn't it? If you could contact Nicholas Flamel, I'd prefer to give the Stone back in person after we're done with using it as bait and show him all the things I found out."

That seemed to have awakened the researcher in Dumbledore.

"Original research in alchemy, at age eleven…", he muttered, studying the pictures. "You know, I did some research on the Stone when I was young, well, not as young as you but when I first worked with Nicholas."

"Did you make gold? Did you find the curse?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "I made one twentieth of an ounce, once, against Perenelle's warning, and suffered for weeks for it. My hands got injured, as if burned from the inside, my hair fell out and I got so sick I couldn't think straight from the headache, I learnt my lesson and never tried again. Nicholas said he had it similar but worse when he first experimented with it, and if not for the Elixir he'd have died."

That sounds even worse than how Hermione said the book described it. And why did the Elixir cure the symptoms? I had assumed the effects were only the anti aging that Flamel reported.

"Hm, I made 100 milligrams and I feel just fine."

"You did what?"

I showed Dumbledore my timer-triggered lead dispenser.

"Interesting. You had a machine perform the transmutation. I did not think of that. And no curse on you?"

"No. It does seem like we have one hint: Distance plays a role. If you're not there, you don't get cursed. Since it's an unintentional side-effect and not an intelligently designed curse it was unlikely that it'd have a sophisticated targeting system capable of finding out who built the mechanism."

"I hope you didn't curse a random muggle walking by, Harry. You are in the middle of London."

Shit. I never even thought of that.

"Uh, I hope not. If that had happened, someone could have used it to find out that the Stone is here, so the Fidelius should have prevented it, right?"

If the curse targets the closest person, then it might actually be a pretty interesting "Power he knows not" against Voldemort: Fill a bigger-on-the-inside bag with as much lead as possible, add the Philosopher's Stone on a timing mechanism, owl the bag to your enemy and you have what's effectively a curse-timebomb. Since the strength of the gold curse scales with how much gold you make and a few small flakes are enough to make someone sick, a few kilos should be more than enough to ensure Voldemort has a very, very bad day. It'd require you to mail the Philosopher's Stone to him though, so not very practical. Unless Flamel has a way of producing more Stones? Maybe you could put a curse-bomb on a missile delivery system, or portkey it in…

That particularly dark train of thought got interrupted when Hermione came rushing into my lab.

"Merry Christmas, Miss Granger."

"Eep! Professor Dumbledore!"

Oh right, I don't think she's ever actually met him, besides seeing him at the teacher's table. Casually talking to one of the world's most powerful wizards takes some getting used to.

"Hermione, he's here because he found out about me borrowing the Stone."

Hermione processed that for a moment and clarified: "For the record, Professor, I never approved of Harry's 'borrowing'. I just helped translating French, and tried to stop Harry from cursing himself with it."

Oh, that treasonous backstabbing witch, when did she get that good at lying with a straight face? She approved of my heist the moment she laid eyes on Flamel's book! And to use air quotes… I'm impressed. I'll get back at her for that later.

"Did you get the pictures developed?"

She nodded, but her expression dropped. "They're all useless. The entire film got ruined. The Christmas pictures, the experiment, everything. It's all completely fogged over. You did use proper shielding when you did the X-rays, right?"

I'm pretty sure that Hermione's parents' camera wasn't even there when I X-rayed the Stone, so that can't have been the cause of it.

On the other hand….

Fogged film. Nausea. Hair loss.

Anti-aging has to include repairing faulty DNA. It also happens to cure these symptoms.

No detectable curse.

Lead to gold. One element into another. Flamel's book never mentioned anything about which _isotopes_.

It can't be that simple, can it? Surely someone would have thought of this before me? Unless nobody worked on this since…?

"Professor Dumbledore, when you worked with Flamel and did your own experiments, that was before you were busy with the whole Grindelwald war situation, right?"

"Indeed, it was back in the early 30s. After the war I was busy with politics and running Hogwarts, I did not have much time for research."

Before WW2. Before anyone knew the symptoms of radiation poisoning. Maybe even before neutrons were discovered, I'm not that sure on my history of physics. I used to rely on Wikipedia instead of memorization for that kind of thing.

"...where the heck am I going to get a Geiger counter in the middle of the holidays?"

-HP-HP-HP-

Answer: In the Department of Physics of the Imperial College in London. They've got an entire cabinet full of Geiger counters and dosimeters right here. Even some of the fancy ones that can tell you exactly which kind of radiation you're dealing with. Since there's almost nobody here over the holidays nobody should notice if I borrow one until I can buy my own unit, right?

Even if someone notices, I doubt the security cameras here can see through Death's invisibility cloak.

"Kreacher, if you could please take me home?"

_Crack._

I'm starting to worry that Hermione might have a point. This "borrowing" might become a bad habit for me.

-HP-HP-HP-

_Tick._

_Tick._

_Tick tick tick ticktickticktick beep BEEP BEEP BEEP!_

Theory confirmed. The gold is radioactive. Low energy beta, but a lot of it, and that just from this tiny amount.

"I think you should contact the Flamels. There's no way they won't be interested in this."

-HP-HP-HP-

_**Tchieeeew… Bang!** _

After Fred had ignited it, the rocket sped up and exploded in the night sky in a burst of colours.

"Wow, those muggle fireworks pack a punch!"

"But they don't last as long as Filibuster's", George commented.

"And they're not as safe", I mentioned.

"Dad would cherish them, though. He loves the things muggles invent. Too bad he's still in Romania with Charlie."

I nodded. "Too many wizards dismiss everything that doesn't use magic. Even though that means ignoring what 99.9% of the world's creative minds come up with."

"Could you think of anything in specific that we could use?" Fred asked eagerly, the "for pranking someone" heavily implied.

"I'll tell you if I think of something."

"Happy new year!", George said. "May it have as much mischief and madness as the previous one!"

Let's hope it won't be directed in my direction.

-HP-HP-HP-

"Experiment number four. Zero point one grams of lead-206. Everyone behind the line? Three, two one, transmutation."

Dumbledore waved his wand, the tiny ball of lead dropped on the Stone, flashed and changed color to a shimmering gold.

_BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!_

Multiple devices on the table next to the Stone started beeping loudly, but the one next to us stayed quiet.

After the Flamels had arrived and been briefed on the nature of the curse, it had taken them and Dumbledore less than a day to invent a completely new kind of shield charm capable of blocking all radiation except visible light. With that in place and multiple (legitimately bought!) dosimeters the experiments were somewhat safe to conduct.

And of course it took them less than a week to come up with a way to separate lead into different isotopes.

"We didn't get neutrons this time", Nicholas Flamel found, examining the neutron dosimeter. "Resulting gold still beta radioactive."

Me and Hermione watched Dumbledore levitate the gold ball into a bottle while Perenelle ran spells on the Stone and Nicholas checked the readings from the other dosimeters.

"It's weird how fast you get used to having the three best alchemists in the world in your basement doing nuclear science."

"Yeah. It's pretty fascinating. Both the Stone and seeing how they work on it."

"You do realize that they probably won't allow us to get filthy rich with it?"

-HP-HP-HP-

"So, here are the results", Nicholas pointed at the transfigured blackboard. "Natural lead and isotope 207 and 208 cause a burst of neutrons. 206 and 204 do not. They all produce gold that is beta-radioactive. Interestingly, the gold produced from 204 is only about a third as radioactive as all the other gold."

"Who does not know, the isotopes so, their power sees, and properties," I murmured.

Dumbledore raised his eyebrow and asked: "Is that from Goethe?"

"Yes, I prefer the original version of _Faust_ , the translation really butchered it, but _Wer sie nicht kennte, die Isotope_ doesn't rhyme. I thought it'd be a thematically appropriate quote."

Nicholas grunted. "Oh, don't remind me of how that gross misrepresentation of Johann's achievements. Deals with the devil, what nonsense!"

Perenelle interjected: "Calm down, mon mari. He's just a writer who's been dead for one hundred and fifty years. Anyways", she addressed all of us Stone experimenters, "while you did experiments six to ten, I traveled home and got an old sample of gold from 1650. It's not radioactive. Not any more."

That's interesting. "But it is still gold?", I asked. "Not decayed into some other element?"

"According to all known alchemical charms, it is still magically inert gold. Slightly heavier than expected. About 130 Trithemius."

"19.5 grams per cubic centimeter in the modern muggle system", Dumbledore converted, knowing that I prefered metric. "The samples are too small to get more exact measurements."

" _Do you happen to know the density of normal gold?",_ I silently asked Hermione with a glance.

" _Here",_ she sent me a recollection of the entire periodic table, with atomic weight and electronegativity values. Because of course she has that memorized.

" _Hm, gold has only one stable isotope, Au-197 at 19.3 g/cm³. Their old gold appears to be stable, but heavier, without magic."_

" _That is interesting. Here's a memory of the isotope map around that area. None of the other gold isotopes match what we've got."_

" _The different lead isotopes behaving differently is interesting._

_Lead-206 is three protons, six neutrons above gold-197._

_That divides by three, and it results in three times as much radiation as lead-204."_

" _One proton, two neutrons, tritium._

_Tritium is a radioactive species with a half-life of 12.32 years, emitting weak beta radiation._

_That matches what we detected from the radioactive gold."_

" _And 204 is three protons, four neutrons above gold, which means one tritium and two protons and two neutrons left, either helium or two deuterium, not radioactive._

_Pb-204 →(Stone)→ Au-197 + 2D + 1T_

_Pb-206 →(Stone)→ Au-197 + 3T"_

(I really thought the last part not as text, but as a more general idea and put it in front of my occlumency barriers for Hermione to read but that's not possible to put into writing.)

" _You think the Stone splits the lead into gold and hydrogen isotopes?"_

" _Would be a plausible explanation for the radiation, any why the gold itself doesn't decay. And heavier lead would result in some hydrogen-4, which I've never heard of, so it probably instantly decays, producing the neutron radiation we've seen._

_Pb-207 →(Stone)→ Au-197 + 2T + 1H-4→ (decay)→ Au-197 + 3T + 1n_

_Pb-208 →(Stone)→ Au-197 + 1T + 2H-4→ (decay)→ Au-197 + 3T + 2n"_

" _How would the hydrogen stay in the gold? Isn't it a gas"_

" _I vaguely remember an article I read in 2016 about metallic hydrogen created in a muggle lab. Maybe it's some sort of stable alloy of gold and metallic heavy radioactive hydrogen?"_

" _Possible. So Flamel invented controlled nuclear fission without realizing it?"_

And my "curse bomb" idea was just a very impractical version of a plain old neutron bomb.

The entire thought conversation had taken maybe five seconds, after which we exclaimed in perfect synchronization:  
"Eureka!"

-HP-HP-HP-

"So let me get this straight", Snape said with a bewildered expression, sitting next to me at Dumbledore's desk, "despite all the protections that most of the Hogwarts staff helped create - or should I say most of the _old_ staff, given the recent influx of new hires - despite all of that, Potter here managed to break in and steal the Philosopher's Stone in less than an hour, then made a major breakthrough in Alchemy by combining it with muggle nuclear science, and spent most of the holidays with none other than Albus Dumbledore and the Flamels messing around in his basement?"

"Yep, that sums it up. Although Professor Dumbledore's protection took most of the time. Your riddle took less than two minutes to break through, sorry. And to be honest, the breakthrough wasn't that special, anyone with a basic A-level understanding of post-WW2 physics could've done it after realizing that not every invisible danger is inherently magical. Oh, and Hermione deserves some credit too."

"Indeed. Harry's and Hermione Granger's discoveries are quite obvious in hindsight. We did confirm their theories, but after that we had to move the Stone back into the castle before the end of the holidays, now with increased security."

No house elf apparition any more, the safe replaced with the mirror of Erised, and the troll room replaced with a small challenge of my own creation. Basically a door that opens when you answer some riddles, just like the Ravenclaw entrance, but it's random trivia that nobody knows by heart. So once you get there you have to go back, look it up in the library, and return, only to get the next riddle which requires another research trip. Each trip to the library also requires the intruder to go through all the previous challenges again, multiplying the stall time of the previous rooms instead of just adding on to it, and increasing risk of getting detected.

"While you were gone playing mad scientists, I kept an eye on Quirrel. He spent most of the Holidays in Hogsmeade. I saw him going to the Hog's head a few times, doing some shady business. Apart from that he wasn't up to anything extraordinary, I did not see him getting close to the forbidden corridor, and now he's back to normal. He still carries the Dark Lord, I checked."

"Any new ideas on how we could destroy him?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "Unfortunately, I was quite occupied with our alchemical work."

Looks like it's time to get back to the main quest then. How do I get rid of my immortal enemy?


	19. Snowballing changes

**Author's Note: First of all, huge thanks for all the positive feedback! I am absolutely overwhelmed with how high the fav count has gotten. Since so many people are reading this I decided to use the opportunity to mention a few of my own favorites with less favs than this that I think you might enjoy:**

_Coven_ by Naidhe: Hermione messes around with dark magic and befriends Pansy. Has a very nice scene where Pansy discovers that muggles have gotten quite advanced.

_The Imposter Complex_ by Notus Oren: A different Diary Tom tries to fight against Voldemort. Written in first person like this one.

_Exile_ by bennybear: Draco Malfoy's life after the War ended. He gets a job at a library and learns biology.

_Harry Potter and the Girl Who Walked on Water_ by Starfox5: Possibly the most absurd ship in the entire fandom. Literally.

_A Wizard's Guide to 'Banking'_ by Bakuraptor: Genetics + Polyjuice + inventive muggleborns = great story.

_Voldemort's Bad Day_ by Diresquirrel: Aside from paved streets, photography, the wireless, and the Hogwarts Express, what have muggles ever given us?

_In the Bleak Midwinter_ by TheLoud: Time-traveling Hermione and a very clever Tom Riddle Sr. having adventures in the roaring 20s.

**In case it's not obvious, the Prophecy mentioned here is directly copied from the Harry Potter Wiki, not a single bit of original content there.**

**And finally, I apologize for taking so long between chapters. My life is a bit of a mess right now.**

Excuse me, WHOSE life is a mess? No idea what you're dealing with, but you're not the dimensionally misplaced one!

… **Ok, you got a point there. Corona's bad but it's not a Dark Lord trying to kill me. Now forget about it. You're not supposed to know that you're in a story.**

"I'm in a _what_?"

_**Obliviate.** _ **Author out.**

"What did you just say?", Terry asked me, cowering behind our fortification.

"I didn't say anything."

Strange. I've got this weird feeling in my mind…

Then it hit me.

**PFOF!**

Well, getting a snowball in the face in the middle of a snowball fight was kinda to be expected. Especially on the first weekend after the holidays where hundreds of students from all houses joined in on one massive brawl to vent the frustrations of classwork. Even the mighty Lord Voldemort is unlikely to be spared if those snowy missiles the twins are enchanting are heading where I think they are.

Speaking of someone not being spared, time for some retribution…

"I'll get you for that!", I shouted towards the Slytherin snow fort, grabbed some snow, formed it into a nice big spheroid, whispered " _Wingardium Leviosa_ " and threw the projectile with some subtle wandless aid in the right direction, where it hit a third-year (I think?).

Ah, the childish joy of delivering a decently sized amount of snow into the face of someone you barely know anything about except for the house they're in and a guess at their age.

A little later I witnessed Hermione, who had opted to spend her time reading instead of snowball fighting (and was in the middle of a fascinating book on making transfigurations permanent and irreversible) refusing an opportunity at inter-house friendship: "No, Daphne, I don't want to build a snowman with you, I'm busy, ok? Just let it go."

Honestly, she's having way too much fun subtly provoking me with jokes that only I can possibly get.

-HP-HP-HP-

"So you're telling me, still no progress on our little dark lord problem?", I asked Dumbledore and Snape at yet another meeting in the Headmaster's office.

Dumbledore responded: "As much as I regret delaying this vital issue, I barely had time to spend on it due to my other duties. The recent increase in Hogwarts staff has led to a proportional increase in paperwork, which I had originally planned to catch up with during the holidays but I neglected that due to our research project. Sherbet Lemon?"

I took one as Dumbledore continued. Huh, actually pretty good.

"Then there was a rather unpleasant incident that came to light on Wednesday which required me in my function as Supreme Mugwump. An american oil company was using a new seismic imaging technique and they had detected a goblin tunnel with improperly cast unplottable charms. Since they didn't know it was magic related the american Obliviators didn't find out about it until weeks later and they had to alter a significant amount of both memories and records, which sparked a minor international incident. The american Gringotts branch that the tunnel belongs to insisted that a secrecy breach like that would not happen again now that they were aware of how precise muggle technology had become, but many politicians, especially those who do not like goblins, have used the incident to voice concerns about whether goblin magic can be trusted to keep the Statute of Secrecy."

Ouch. I can't remember that incident being mentioned anywhere, so it's quite likely that my own past meddling - helping werewolves, changing NASA's schedule by fixing the Hubble - somehow snowballed through the butterfly effect to lead to this. Wouldn't take much to cause some company to test their new equipment on a different day at a different location.

"What are the chances that this could cause an international goblin rebellion?"

"Unfortunately, if the ICW decides to force goblins to have wizards enchant all their tunnels, as some of my less goblin-friendly colleagues have proposed, quite possible. It seems like some think they could even profit from such a disaster."

Politics, it's the same everywhere. Warmongers provoke wherever they can… Of course some people might be interested in causing the majority of the magical world's money to change hands. What's next, 'evidence' appearing of goblins having WMDs?

Now that I think about it, what if whoever runs this universe decides that I, as the hero of the story, need to have some kind of conflict to keep me busy at all times? Would it mean that I'm close to defeating Voldemort if it already prepares another plot? It's just speculation, but maybe…. If the world is giving me hints….

"As fascinating as wizarding politics are, maybe we should get back to dealing with the Dark Lord," Snape interrupted.

"Indeed, Severus."

"Could I maybe see the original memory of the Prophecy?", I asked. "It's been a while since I heard it, and that was what Sirius remembered after years with Dementors, I'm not perfectly sure I have the accurate version."

Dumbledore agreed, summoned his Pensieve, and moments later a ghostly (or hologram-looking, if you prefer,) image of Trelawney appeared, speaking in a monotone voice:

" _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches..._

_born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies..._

_and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not..._

_and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives..._

_the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies..._ "

Wait a moment. That's not quite how I remembered it.

"Can you play that again? Especially the third line?"

There it was.

"I could've sworn it was _a_ power he knows not. Maybe I always interpreted it wrong?"

"Power, a power, makes no difference, does it Potter?"

"I'd not be so sure, Severus. Every word, or lack thereof, could matter. A power is a specific ability. It could also refer to power in general?"

"I can assure you, the Dark Lord knows plenty about power."

Could this mean… No, that'd be way too easy, wouldn't it? I shelved that idea months ago, if it had any chances of working surely Dumbledore would've thought of it?

"Maybe he won't by the time it gets fulfilled? This might be a really stupid idea, but what if we obliviate him and make him forget all about power and being a dark wizard?"

Dumbledore considered the idea. "If we could successfully wipe his memories, that could stop another war. It would even completely circumvent the steps he has taken to prevent his soul from passing on."

"A big if, Potter," Snape interposed. "The Dark Lord is extremely skilled at the Mind Arts. He is likely one of the best Occlumens in the world. Breaking through that will not be easy."

"Well, I wasn't suggesting using Legilimency to invade his mind, I was more thinking about taking a mental sledgehammer to it with Obliviate, the difficult part of that spell is to not accidentally wipe too much, and we don't really need to worry about that in this case."

Snape sighed and shook his head. "Don't think too much about yourself just because you have managed to put basic barriers on your mind and you removed a few seconds of memory from a troll."

"What if we got help? The Ministry has an entire department of skilled Obliviators."

"While having multiple Obliviators attacking Voldemort at the same time could work, if there's more than maybe three or four in the same mind at the same time they would get in each other's way," Dumbledore theorized.

"And most of the Ministry Obliviators are used to working on muggle minds that are even less defended than that of a troll. I myself could maybe keep the active defenses busy, if you focus on breaching the barriers that leaves Potter and one Ministry dolt to do the actual wiping."

Oh my bloody… I don't like where this is going.

"So our problem is that we don't have anyone who is skilled at removing lots of memories from powerful wizards?"

What did I do to deserve _this?_

**AN: Muahahaha! Sorry, I needed** _ **someone**_ **to vent at, and you drew the short straw.**

-HP-HP-HP-

Hog's Head.

Not the most reputable place, but given the nature of the usual tenants nobody bats an eye when a cloaked figure comes to use the private meeting room upstairs. It's the perfect location for a shady business meeting.

Which is exactly why I'm here tonight.

I shook hands with my guest.

"Thank you for taking your time to come. I know you've got to have a very busy schedule."

"Oh, no problem," he laughed, "when none other than Harry Potter owls me, asking for my help, who am I to refuse? After all, I didn't earn my honorary membership in the Dark Force Defence League by ignoring people in need!"

"Well, it's good that you're here. I've got a little problem, and you might be the only wizard in the country who can help me."

"Let me guess, you're a bit inexperienced with managing your fame, aren't you? There haven't been any articles about you in months! Don't worry, there's no shame in that!"

I shook my head. "No, it's not that. It's rather - and this might sound strange, but it's true - I've got a dark wizard who is trying to kill me, and I need a man of your skills to, well, solve that issue."

He stared at me, the award-winning smile destroyed in an instant. "You want me to kill a Death Eater?"

"Not a Death Eater. And you're not supposed to kill him. You see, I kinda did a bad job at the thing I'm famous for. I'm sure you can relate."

"You're not saying… It's _Him?_ "

"Yes. Voldemort's back."

His face went as white as a triple-FF hex code.

"I might," he whispered after a few seconds, "have slightly exaggerated my accomplishments in my books. In fact, if you may excuse me", he got up and took steps towards the door, "I've got an important… uh, thing, that I need to deal with, in… Argentina."

I took a deep breath and did my best at speaking in a commanding tone. Not easy with the voice of an eleven year old, I might add.

"Stay. We're not finished."

He froze.

"'Slightly exaggerated' is a bit of an understatement, don't you think? After all, there's only one charm you're really good at. Luckily for you, it's the one we need."

"What do you mean?"

"He-whose-name-you-are-too-afraid-to-say is immortal. Killing him is something I already tried and failed. Fortunately there are other ways to destroy a wizard. Of course, you know that better than anyone. How many people have you stolen memories from?"

"They'd never have managed to successfully publish their stories!"

Lockhart started to panic, frantically attempting to find an excuse. "If not for me, nobody would've read about them! I helped thousands of people learn how to defend against dangerous creatures!"

He drew his wand. "I'm sorry, but I can't allow you to reveal my secret. It's for the greater good. _Obliviate._ "

The spell left his wand and simply disintegrated in mid-air.

"A most dangerous phrase. Oh Gilderoy, I am so disappointed", Albus Dumbledore said calmly as he dispelled his disillusionment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason AO3 doesn't allow formatted Author Notes, so that's why I'm putting them into the chapter itself.


	20. Operation sudo rm -rf /*

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Voldemort! First year conclusion... in January.

**Chapter 20: Operation sudo rm -rf /***

Finally it’s looking like we have a solid plan. Two weeks after ‘convincing’ Lockhart to work with us, I am reasonably confident of my own memory charming ability. Despite being a total fraud, he turned out to be good at teaching that one spell.

“Checklist item 14: Polyjuice”, I read.

“Potion and hair ready”, Snape answered. He’s going to be in disguise when we attack, just in case we fail and he’s needed as a spy.

“15: Felix Felicis?”

“Four twenty-minute doses. Weren’t cheap, but we got them.”

“Okay, check and check. How’s Fawkes?”, I asked Dumbledore, whose black eye was already entirely gone. Ok, maybe the Hog’s Head _hadn’t_ been the perfect location, but how was I supposed to know that the barman would react so badly to catching his brother sneaking around invisibly?

“He has fully recovered from his last burning day. Should we need him, he’ll be there.”

The bird in question agreed with a weird chirping sound.

“That’s everything we thought of so far. Well, there’s one other thing. It would be really helpful, but I kinda promised to keep it secret. Especially from you.”

“What’s that, Potter?”

“No matter what it is, Severus, it is clearly something that someone close to Harry has entrusted him with. If it’s important for our mission, I will promise to act as if I was completely unaware of it.”

Snape looked at Dumbledore, sighed after a moment, and concurred. “Fine. I will pretend like I don’t know it either.”

I opened my bag, got out a folded piece of parchment and touched it with my wand. “ _I solemnly swear I am up to no good._ ”

Dumbledore looked at the unfolding clutter of lines and whistled. “Impressive. Your father’s and his friends’ creation?”

I nodded.

Snape stared at the map and mumbled: “So that’s how they always got away with it…”

Dumbledore asked: “Am I correct to assume that the Weasley twins are amongst the users of this remarkable creation?”

Another nod. “They’d not be happy with me if they found out I showed it to you. I only borrowed it from them.”

“Well, I did promise to ignore it. As did you, Severus.”

Snape grudgingly agreed.

“With this, we know exactly where Quirrel is. He probably still has no idea that we’ve been onto him for months. We got a plan with a good chance of working. I say we don’t delay any longer and proceed as soon as possible.”

“I will contact Gilderoy, then.”

-HP-HP-HP-

I sighed. This was not a conversation I had been looking forward to, but it was necessary.

“Hermione? We need to talk. It’s about Quirrel. _Muffliato._ We have a plan that could permanently destroy Voldemort with a reasonably good chance of success. We’re probably going to do it tonight. If everything goes well, it’ll all be over by tomorrow. If things don’t go well, the risk should still be minimal, Dumbledore is very capable and Voldemort should be very, very weak. There is a minor chance of a worst-case scenario though.”

“Worst-case scenario?”

“Me dead, Dumbledore dead, Snape dead, Voldemort on the loose. We did absolutely everything we could think of to prevent that, but if it still happens, I’m giving you everything I have.”

Hermione looked aghast. “You really think you could die?”

“A very low chance, but possible. Listen, I wrote a notebook. It’s in Grimmauld. It contains every single important bit of information I have, including things not really appropriate for twelve year olds, like seriously dark magic.”

The Prophecy. The Hallows. Horcruxes and where to find them, including those already recovered. If the worst happens and I die, destroying all the Horcruxes becomes a possibility, after all. And finally, the true nature of this world. I’ve always neglected to tell her that the books I read about her in the future hadn’t exactly been in the ‘wizarding history’ section of the library.

“I instructed Kreacher to give it to you if, and only if, I die or otherwise become unable to fight Voldemort. If that happens, which probably also means that Dumbledore is also dead since we’re working together, I’m giving you the responsibility to use that information to organize a resistance. There’s a list of trusted names included. Once you’re done with that, use what’s left of my money to get everyone who’s not an adult or not willing to fight and move to someplace far, far away. You’re not going to be fighting a war at age twelve. That’s an order. Got everything?”

She was almost sobbing. “Worst-case. Kreacher. Notebook. Resistance. Evacuate.”

I gave her a hug. “Good. Remember, we took every precaution we could. The chance of you needing to do anything is very, very low.”

-HP-HP-HP-

Midnight. Most of the castle was asleep. Four wizards stood in a secret room, waiting.

The dot labeled “Quirinus Quirrel” moved through the third floor corridor and disappeared into the unmapped area.

I stowed away the map and informed the others: “He’s in.”

Snape replied: “Last night he made it all the way to question 5. Another week and he’d be at the Stone. We really didn’t have much time left.”

“We’ve got to do it tonight. No postponing now.”

Dumbledore nodded. Gilderoy gulped. Snape reached into his pocket and retrieved several vials, one brown, one green and four with a small amount of golden liquid.

On the other side of the door we could hear someone shouting and statues moving. Quirrel had reached the chess set, again. The McGonagall's chess AI had turned out to be deterministic, if you beat it once you could beat it again with exactly the same moves. Not intended for repeated usage.

Snape and Lockhart took the Polyjuice and adjusted their robes for their slightly changed sizes.

Quirrel’s voice on the other side of the door started to answer the door’s questions.

We all took our doses of the _Felix Felicis_. The effect was astonishing, immediately I felt confident that this would work.

“What is the birthday of Queen Victoria?”, the door revealed the next question.

“Merlin! How many of these stupid questions are there?”, Quirrel shouted in anger. I immediately felt the joy of a creation of mine working exactly as intended, somewhat elevated by the potion in my system.

While opening the door from the outside required answering a dozen questions correctly, opening it from the inside required none of that. Dumbledore slammed the door open, revealing a very surprised Quirrel.

“Albus? What the..”

A flash from Dumbledore’s wand, and Quirrel flew across the room that had formerly housed a troll and slammed him face-first into the wall. A mass of golden ropes followed, forming a web that held him there.

The hidden runework in the walls and ceiling came to life, glowing and pulsing and _connecting_ to the golden web that held Quirrel in place, causing the golden threads to radiate.

I had little time to admire Dumbledore’s trap before another wand-wave caused the turban to just fade out of existence, revealing the ugly face of Voldemort below.

Snape didn’t hesitate, pointed his wand at Voldemort and shouted “ _LEGILIMENS!_ ”. Dumbledore followed with the same spell.

Quick, do something. “My name is Harry Potter! You killed my parents! Prepare to die! _OBLIVIATE!_ ”

Describing how it feels to attack a mind is difficult. I could feel _his_ mind, the barriers protecting it, the two other individuals inside it, probing the barriers.

There! Dumbledore’s incredibly fast mental probe had found a crack, widened it, and I slipped in. A memory immediately threw itself at me. A ritual circle, a naked human body, blood everywhere, _the screams_ \- then the memory dissolved into nothingness as I instinctively wiped it before it made me puke. That’s _one_ way to thwart intruders.

I could vaguely hear noise from the real world, “GILDEROY NOW”, “OBLIVIATE!”, then Lockhart’s mind arrived with the force of a freight train and started destroying everything in his path.

While we were deleting as much as we could, Dumbledore was busy cracking a second series of barriers, revealing even more cluttered memories, even more traps, and another barrier - how many did Voldemort have?

Seconds later - although they felt like much longer inside - we were all violently expelled from Voldemort’s mind as if it had just ceased to exist.

Which it had, in a way. Black, oily smoke poured out of the back of Quirrel’s head, the face there melting away. The smoke simply passed through the fine mesh of golden threads meant to keep Voldemort from escaping and condensed into a cloud - with a face on it.

“ALBUS DUMBLEDORE. HARRY POTTER.”, it spoke. Then it moved away, passed through the wall, ignoring the vibrant runes, and disappeared.

“ _Reducto!_ ”, Lockhart cast in a heroic attempt to stop Voldemort from escaping, but all he accomplished was blasting a hole in the wall. Through it we could see the black cloud floating away, disappearing over the Forbidden Forest.

“Well, shit.”

**AN: Thought I’d let you have it that easy, did you?**


	21. Aftermath

##  ** Chapter 21: Aftermath **

While I watched Voldemort’s spirit disappear in the distance, still processing what had just happened, Dumbledore called Fawkes and disappeared with Quirrel in a flash of fire.

Snape turned around and gave me a questioning look with his unfamiliar polyjuiced face. “Really, Potter? ‘You killed my parents, prepare to die’?”

“ I felt like I had to say  _ something _ ! If it had worked, he’d have written a bestseller about it!”, I answered, pointing at Lockhart who was still recovering from the shock of realizing that he’d just cursed Lord Voldemort in the face.

“ But to quote  _ The Princess Bride _ ?”

Now that was a surprise that completely succeeded in distracting me from our massive screw-up that had just happened. “It wasn’t great, okay, but it was the only thing I could think of on the fly! And I’m honestly surprised that you know that movie.”

Snape shook his head. “The book. Lily once… threw her copy at me.”

Oh. Probably after something happened that split their friendship further. “I’m sorry.”

Lockhart was confused: “What are you two talking about?”

“Nothing.”

-HP-HP-HP-

I barely got any sleep that night. After Dumbledore had returned from St. Mungo’s, reporting that Quirrel was barely alive thanks to Phoenix tears, Lockhart (correctly) assuming that we wouldn’t let him continue stealing people’s memories had taken advantage of our current lack of a Defense Professor to get himself a new job and Snape had announced his discovery of several extremely dark books and a dragon egg in Quirrel’s quarters, it had been almost three past midnight when I returned to Ravenclaw tower, only to be ambushed by a very worried, glad and angry Hermione who reminded me that despite our failure to destroy Voldemort, the situation was far from the worst possible.

Phew.

I seriously think that batch of  _ Felix  _ might not have been the best quality.

At least the next day was a Saturday with no classes.

-HP-HP-HP-

On that day I learnt multiple things.

First, I’m really obvious about my mood for an Occlumens.

Second, when the Weasley twins can easily tell that you’re in a terrible mood, even when they can’t tell that it’s because you let a dark lord loose on the country, they tend to want to cheer you up.

Third, their preferred method of cheering you up is dragging you into the Room of Requirement and starting a party.

Fourth, they have a lot of Butterbeer hidden away for impromptu parties.

Fifth, they figured out that you can ask the Room to fetch the beer from their hiding place.

Sixth, Butterbeer contains alcohol. Not a lot, but it’s not nothing.

Seventh, my body is still eleven and doesn’t have much resistance to alcohol.

Long story short: I got myself drunk for the first time in this reality.

“Did you see the specs of the new Nimbus?”, Fred asked, handing me his Quidditch magazine. “They’re going to start selling it later this year. Ten percent better than the two thousand.”

I made a halfway-decent attempt to read the blurry numbers before giving up. 

“Howww fast?”

George took it. “120 miles per hour top speed, reaches it in less than twelve seconds. Safe all the way up to twenty thousand feet altitude.”

“Wwwhyy ssoo ssloww?”

Fred took my butterbeer bottle away. “Slow? I think you’ve had enough for today, Harry.”

“Yeah, I think he has. Got any of that sober-me-up potion, brother?”

“Wwwhyyyy not goo fazter?”, my muddled brain tried to inquire as to why brooms are speed-limited in the first place.

“Unfortunately, you drank our last vial last week, remember? We haven’t gotten around to brew more.”

“Damnnit,” George said. “And I think that the broomstick enchantments need to be more powerful for a faster broom? Although I’m not sure.”

I had a weird thought and started laughing like a maniac. Rather embarrassing, I have to admit. “Brrooom hasss masssss. Usse ze Force, Luke.”

“ The what? And who’s Luke?”, asked George who had obviously never seen  _ Star Wars _ .

“The Force!”

I was trying to explain how Force is defined as ‘the derivative of momentum with respect to time’ and when _m=const._ it can be written as mass times acceleration, but due to my blood alcohol level it came out as “De-peee deee-tee! Ma! Godda go faszt!”

“George, what were we thinking, giving Harry this much butterbeer? Look at what we’ve done to the Boy-Who-lived! He’s blabbering nonsense!”

“To be quite honest, I have no idea.”

Lessons were learned that day. Others not.

Because I’m not that good at holding an _Introduction to Newtonian mechanics_ lecture while drunk.

-HP-HP-HP-

“ORDER! ORDER! I will have Order in this room!”

I honestly wasn’t quite sober by the evening, but hopefully nobody noticed my slight drunkenness at the first assembly of the Order of the Phoenix since 1981.

“As Harry so eloquently put it, it’d be nice to calm things down and begin with the meeting”, Dumbledore calmly stated and the room went still. The eyes of the assembled wizards and witches darted between me and him.

After a few seconds of silence, an elderly wizard spoke up. “Albus, why did you tell us to come? And why is there a boy at the table?”

“I’m Harry Potter, pleased to meet you. And the reason why everyone is here is that I screwed up the one thing I’m supposed to have done.”

Dumbledore sighed as murmurs began around the table.

“When the war ended ten years ago, I did not know whether Voldemort was gone for good or if he would return one day. Unfortunately, now we know that he has survived.”

“We don’t know if he’s still a serious threat,” I interjected. “We kinda blasted his brains, but we don’t know just how successful we were at that. Best case, he forgot how to revive himself and he’ll never be more than a spooky ghost. Worst case, he’s contacting his followers right now and we’ll have another war on our hands by tomorrow.”

“You blasted his brains?”, Sirius asked.

“Why isn’t the Ministry informed of this?”, Mad-Eye Moody asked. “If He’s back, why haven’t you told the aurors?”

Albus replied: “We don’t have any evidence.”

At least none that doesn’t also reveal Lockhart’s secret and that we’ve let Lord Voldemort teach the nation’s children for several months. Yikes. If we tell the public the truth of what happened, I don’t know what’s worse: That they won’t believe us, or that they will.

“As you already know, several suspected Death Eaters have managed to attain positions of significant influence in the Ministry.” 

Moody whispered “Malfoy” as Dumbledore continued:

“Harry thinks that if Voldemort has already succeeded in contacting one, he could convince the Minister to believe that our attempt of alerting the nation was actually an attempt of me to usurp the Minister through fear-mongering. A scenario which I find quite unlikely, but still within the realm of possibilities.”

“Right. Fudge’s a bloody idiot, he could actually be that stupid. I’ll tell my aurors that there are rumors though, so that they can stay vigilant.”

“And what are we going to do?”, a witch who I didn’t recognize asked.

“We need to prepare”, Dumbledore said. “Luckily we will not have many monetary issues this time. My friend Nicholas Flamel has agreed to help us financially, should we need it.”

He had picked up the Stone earlier today via Floo and resumed the experiments at his lab. “So basically if you can think of literally anything that would’ve been really useful during the last war, let’s buy it. We got the gold.”

Remus spoke up. “That’s great to hear. International Portkeys aren’t cheap. So far I’ve managed to convince about two dozen fellow werewolves to join the BLA, but even spread across all of us and with Sirius’s help it’s not easy.”

Dumbledore nodded. “If that’s how it is, I’m sure Nicholas will agree to assist. The more werewolves we can enable to live a normal life, the fewer will be desperate enough for change to be drawn to Voldemort.”

And so the discussions on how to proceed began.

After the majority of the attendants had gotten over the shock of hearing about Voldemort’s return and the surprise of having a little boy at the table, we went on to decide to stock up on various healing potions, partially brewed by Snape, partially bought, as well as many ingredients that may be hard to get in a war situation.

We decided to have several members with free time and a good reputation (including Sirius) get themselves involved into politics to subtly combat the influence of suspected Death Eaters (mostly Malfoy). 

Someone mentioned that given how easy it is to block apparition we might need good brooms to escape dangerous situations which prompted more discussion on whether to mass-order Nimbus 2000s or to wait for the 2001 release. I suggested getting the 2000s and using more of our sponsor’s money to get the 2001s later, then donating the obsolete 2000s to the Hogwarts Quidditch teams. Totally not a scheme to funnel some of the generous war budget towards other interests.

Several Order members were given the task to turn their homes into impenetrable fortresses. Grimmauld will be base #3, with Hogwarts being our Headquarters for now.

We’re also planning to buy a few random secluded muggle homes and turn them into safehouses as well, but given the enormous amount of effort involved in securing a place from attack it may take quite some time until they’re usable.

No Fideliuses planned for now as they can be quite disruptive to normal life, but we’re working on a list of places where nobody outside of the Order would have a reason to visit.

The topic of getting a supply of spare wands was brought up since kidnapping the few wandmakers Britain has may be within the range of Voldemort’s capabilities, so Dedalus Diggle is now looking into it.

Hagrid was absent at the meeting as he was at a dragon reserve in Ireland, delivering the dragon egg we found amongst Quirrel’s things. He should’ve been back by the time of the meeting but you know him and dragons… It was decided to postpone the question of whether he should contact the giants to the next meeting.

Recruiting more members was discussed. Moody suggested Kingsley Shacklebolt. Arthur mentioned his two eldest sons, much to the protest of his wife. I asked Sirius if he thought his cousin Andromeda and her family might be interested. Having a metamorphmagus available would be extremely advantageous, after all.

We do not know the exact status and capabilities of Voldemort. But we’re doing our best to ensure that no matter what happens, we’ll be prepared as best as possible.

Unfortunately, things didn’t all go perfectly smooth. Just as the meeting had formally ended and most members had left, Sirius and Snape, who had avoided looking at each other the entire time, finally spoke to each other.

“Black.”

“Snivellus.”

“I had wondered if eight years with the Dementors were enough to temper your arrogance. Apparently not.”

“Just as snarky as the last time we met, a decade ago. How does the snake tattoo suit you?”

I couldn’t let that continue. “OH, STOP IT WITH THE BICKERING!”

I turned to Sirius. “Sirius. Ever since the day we met you’ve been like a father for me. Just what I needed after the Dursleys. Please, do me a favor here and don’t ruin it now.”

To Snape. “Professor. I know you and my parents were complicated, and you’ve got a good reason to not like me or Sirius. But we’ve been getting along splendidly, and working with you and Professor Dumbledore so far has been an absolute honor. I really want that to continue, and not just because it would severely reduce our chances of success otherwise.”

Back to the very shocked and confused Sirius. “I need both of you. Despite everything, I’m eleven and in the middle of a war. Please, just do me one favor and do an honest effort of burying your stupid feud!”

After a second of silence, Remus said: “You know, he’s right. We can’t afford to be enemies any more. We’re all on the same side. And it’s a shame that he’s more of an adult than us.”

That got Snape and Sirius to at least stop glaring at each other.

Sirius sighed. “It’s times like these when I am reminded that you’re not James.”

Snape nodded. “And he’s not Lily either. Although he does have her eyes.”

I’m really sick of hearing that line over and over again. “Oh, please, I wish I had. The Fates must be playing a cruel joke on me, because they only saw it fit to give me her eye colour. The part that matters is all James. As if my life wasn’t enough of a mess already.”

To answer the confused looks I was getting, I took off my glasses. “You think I would need these if I had my mother’s eyesight? Please.” 


	22. Training

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Making progress

##  **Chapter 22: Training**

**AN: Sorry this took so long. This time featuring some actual combat!**

**Our whole studying ahead thing has resulted in me and Hermione having a very unbalanced educational status. In the areas not deemed too urgent like Herbology, we’re at about the same level as our classmates. In the areas where we did learn, we’re at second or early third year level, but not advancing much. And we spent a lot of time learning a select few useful spells from higher years like** _Accio_ where we just memorized incantation and wand movement pattern while skipping most of the theory.

In the dueling club we’re often faced with second years, but we’re holding back to avoid people asking questions. In order to really advance our combat skill, we have to train in secret. 

I heard “ _Expelliarmus!_ ”, and jumped behind a pillar to dodge Hermione’s spell. 

“ _Stupefy!_ ”, I replied but missed by half a meter.

“Dangerous spell incoming, _Reducto!_ ”

I jumped away before my cover got disintegrated by the Reductor curse, and threw a jinx at her: “ _Petrificus Totalus!_ ”

“ _Protego!_ ”, she blocked it casually. “Really? Is that all you have?”

“Of course not.”, I said and cast: “ _Expelliarmus!_ ”

She just stepped to the side and avoided it, casting at the same time.

I dodged her Jelly-Legs curse, and prepared my own attack, “ _Wingardium Leviosa_ ”, I whispered while carefully moving my left hand. A loud “ _Reducto!_ ” from my wand followed, aimed to harmlessly pass above her.

She attempted to jump to the side, but got stuck and fell over. One “ _Accio_ Wand!” from me and it was over.

I noticed some blood on the floor. “Hermione, are you okay? I didn’t want you to get hurt.” 

“Eh, just a scratch. _Episkey, Reparo._ ”

I really need to get better at that one. Quite advanced, but she’s figured it out already, and fixes everything that goes wrong in our training duels. While she mended her skin and robe, I commanded the Room to clean up the broken pillar.

Finally she asked: “How did you get me to trip? I didn’t notice a tripping jinx.”

“It wasn’t. I put a levitation charm on your left shoe.”

“Of course! That’s the wandless spell you’re the best at. I really need to look up how to enchant clothes against that.”

And immediately she’s in research mode and off to the library, and won’t stop until she figures it out.

Maybe I should’ve mentioned that I already had Remus take my dueling robes to an enchanter in Diagon to give it the standard anti-summoning protections? Eh, if she learns it we’ll save money on enchanting all our other clothing.

-HP-HP-HP-

“Oh, Harry, is everything okay?”, Fred asked when we randomly met on the east staircase a few days later.

“You weren’t behaving like normal last time”, George continued.

“Whatever passes for normal with you, anyways.”

“Yeah, I guess I overdid it a little,” I laughed, “but I actually had an idea that might just about work.”

I got my water bottle from my pocket, took a sip and showed them how the enchantment immediately created more water out of nothing, violating conservation of mass, momentum, energy and probably a dozen more laws. And when you can casually do that, it allows for some pretty interesting exploits. In theory.

“That’s interesting,” Fred asked, “but how is this going to make a broom go faster?”

“Trust me, it will. But it’s complicated and I got Transfiguration in ten minutes. Let’s meet tomorrow in the Room of Requirement?”

“Ok,” George confirmed, “and by the way, yesterday we finished a project of ours. We can show it to you then. You’ll love it.”

-HP-HP-HP-

More days passed, the twins showed me their _totally awesome_ project, I explained my idea to them, I and Hermione did more training, and plenty of our time was spent with classes, homework and essays. All in all there wasn’t much time left to worry about the brewing war. Until the occasional meeting, whether with the entire Order or just me, Snape and Dumbledore, brought it up again.

“Harry, good that you’re here on time. We do have something important that we need to discuss today. Occlumency.”

“What about it?”

“While the Headmaster thinks that whatever you taught yourself seems to work somewhat, we both believe that you will need serious improvement.”

“Totally agree. Are you offering to teach me?”

“More or less. Since Severus has a less busy timetable, I asked him to give you weekly lessons.”

Are we ahead of schedule by four years already? Damn, I didn’t even notice.

“Sunday, six o’clock. My office.”

“Do I have to invent a story about me getting remedial potions classes?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Dumbledore answered. “On more positive news, we do have got another safehouse ready, the one in Wales. Nicholas told me he’d have enough gold for another two soon, although he’s not very happy with us using so much of his money.”

Snape continued: “I also got us enough healing potions of all kinds to last years. Even some Polyjuice. Your little Alchemy discovery paid for some quite expensive ingredients.”

And I’m not seeing a knut of it. “Perfect. Remus also got some work done on his project last Friday night. And I have a new project of my own.”

I got a piece of paper from my bag and gave it to Dumbledore.

“Is this.. a map of soviet air bases? Where did you get this?”

“Actually Ukrainian, now. The Soviet Union doesn’t exactly exist any more. As to where I got it from, ask Kreacher. He’s gotten pretty good at navigating the muggle world. The thing about Ukraine is, they currently have a large chunk of the ex-soviet nuclear arsenal. Thousands of bombs and missiles. And they don’t really want them, so they’ll give them back to Russia. But their government is also pretty chaotic right now. Not all pf the paperwork is perfectly done. Things get lost in the bureaucracy. My point is, while I hope that it won’t come to that, if we need the firepower to defeat Voldemort, this is the perfect opportunity to get our hands on a thermonuclear warhead or two.”

Dumbledore and Snape just stared at me. Then after a few seconds Dumbledore sighed. “I’m not really supposed to inform you about this, but I have the unfortunate feeling that if I do not, you will eventually attempt to sneak off on your own...”

And then he told me about the ICW’s top secret Nuclear Oversight & Protection Enforcement, who keep track of all the world’s nukes and magically block them unless they’re about to be used in a weapons test. I’m not quite sure if I should be disappointed that I won’t get to play with nukes or downright euphoric that wizards actually did something sensible for once. 

At least those killjoys have a decent acronym, I’ll give them that.

-HP-HP-HP-

After finishing 300 lines of “I will not steal a nuclear warhead”, It was almost midnight and I was finally on the way to bed with a cramped hand. Stupid quill. Completely unergonomic. If I only had my good old writing tablet with copy & paste. And Wikipedia. And programming. Instead of spending half an hour writing lines I’d probably have spent two hours writing a script to generate handwriting with small differences to make it seem more real, before giving up and writing the lines manually.

I was so lost in 2010’s nostalgia I didn’t notice the leg-locker curse before it caused me to inelegantly fall to the ground.

I immediately grabbed my phoenix wand, but a shouted “ _Expelliarmus!_ ” from a dark corner behind me caused it to promptly fly away. I instinctively cast a wandless levitation charm on it, stopping it mid-air, before extending my right hand to summon it back, Jedi-style.

At the same time I transfigured my eyes to increase photon count and finally noticed my opponent, a small figure in dark robes, who objected to me getting my wand back. “Hey! _Wingardium Leviosa!_ ”

The wand stopped in mid-air for a second time, just barely outside of my reach. For a moment my wandless silent _Accio_ with years of practice behind it and the attacker’s wanded spoken levitation charm fought over control, but it wasn’t even close. There’s a reason barely anyone bothers learning wandless. 

But while wands do have a massive power advantage and make it way easier to learn, they also have the disadvantage of only doing one thing at a time. While the obviously not too advanced attacker was busy with the levitation charm, I used my left hand to open an extended pocket, drew my backup wand - dragon heartstring, californian redwood, 15 inches, great for enchanting and curses - and “ _Stupefy!_ ”.

The mysterious attacker immediately dropped unconscious.

To be quite honest, I’d expected more from someone ambushing me in a dark corridor in the middle of the night.

I summoned my main wand and the attacker’s wand, undid the curse on my legs, added an _Incarcerous_ , cast _Lumos,_ immediately regretted doing that before detransfiguring my eyeballs, detransfigured my eyeballs, and finally took a close look at who cursed me.

Draco Malfoy. Talk about low level enemies. I’ve worried so much about Voldemort recently I completely forgot Draco was still around.

I did my best to give off an imposing look. Wand pointed at him. Voice deepening charm, a real must have to get people on the phone to take you seriously at my age. Slight color change charm on the irises, to better match that Avada green. Although I doubt he’d recognize it, it’s good practice. Now, time to figure out what’s going on. 

“ _Rennervate._ ”

“Hey! What’s going on? Did you tie me up?”

“I’m the one asking the questions here. Understood? Good. Now, what were you thinking, attacking me? What, exactly, was your plan? What were you trying to accomplish?”

“Uh.. I was just trying to get you in trouble a bit.”

“‘Get me in trouble a bit.’ Why? Elaborate.”

Draco gulped, and after a short pause continued:

“After that duel, back in autumn, everyone in Slytherin laughed at me. So I wanted to get back at you for that.”

“So you wanted to, what, improve your reputation? By cursing me in the back? How was that supposed to work?”

“I just noticed that you’re sneaking around in the middle of the night. I thought, if you got caught, you’d no longer be the teacher’s favorite any more. I swear, that’s all. I just wanted to leg-locker you, grab your wand, and wait for Filch to find you.”

That actually makes sense. Slytherin Death-Eater son or not, he’s eleven, so getting me in trouble with the teachers is still the worst he’s mentally capable of. Although I’m not sure if I’m really the teacher’s favorite, Hermione is also a contender for that title. But he probably ignores that possibility, for obvious reasons.

“Okay. You cursed me from behind, not exactly honorable but certainly effective. Then the disarming charm second. Good job with that by the way, it seems like you learnt something from my dueling lesson. Would’ve almost worked.”

“I had no idea you could do wandless magic!”

“Yeah, and I preferred it that way. Unfortunately I’m not quite as good with memory charms as I’d like, if I tried to make you forget that detail there’s a pretty high chance I might make a mess of it.”

His face turned white. Not white skin color white, but triple-255 white. A4 printer paper white. Partly due to the active Lumos I was pointing at him. But mostly due to the fact that obliviation mistakes are terrifying, and no one would ever trust an eleven year old to get it right.

“I swear I won’t tell anyone!”

“Unbreakable Vow?”

“Of course not! Are you crazy?”

“Right. I’d need a third party for that. And waking up Hermione for such a minor thing would indeed be crazy.”

Okay, I think I enjoyed that a little too much. But you can’t force a Vow, and if I accidentally fry his brain Dumbledore would know who it was.

“Fine. No Vow, no obliviation. Looks like I’ll just have to trust you to not spread that around. I could leave you here for Filch to find, but I’ll be nicer than you. So I’ll let you go, you go straight to bed, and never tell anyone about what happened tonight. It wouldn’t exactly help your reputation anyways, losing another duel even though you had the surprise advantage.”

“Really?”

“Yes. But before that, let me tell you another secret about me. You’re probably wondering why I can do wandless magic. Has it ever occurred to you that I am famous?”

“Uh, everyone knows that.”

“Yes. But what not everyone realizes that not everyone likes what I am famous for. There are people who’d prefer if I was gone. And not all of these are in prison.”

“You think people want to kill you?”

“Finally you got it! So obviously I take self-defense a bit more seriously than the average wizard. It’s not paranoia when they’re really out to get you. So when someone curses me in the back in the middle of the night, I do take it very seriously.”

“You thought I was trying to kill you?”

“Up until you said Wingardium Leviosa in that squeaky young voice of yours when I expected a serious curse, what else was I supposed to think? If that had happened a fraction of a second later, I’d have proceeded with a counter-attack appropriate for a professional assassin.”

“And what would that have been?”

I shrugged. “Not sure. Maybe a blasting curse?”

While he imagined the results of that, managing to beat the entire muggle paper industry’s best efforts, I threw his wand out the window into the courtyard below, vanished his ropes and left without another word.

Now I’m always using my invisibility cloak, even when I have a legit reason to be out in the middle of the night.

-HP-HP-HP-

“ _LEGILIMENS!”_

The attack hit my mind, slipped through the primary barriers and scanned for interesting memories. It pretty quickly found one.

  
  


_I and Hermione stood in the middle of a flowery clearing in a forest._

“ _Try it”, I said. Hermione nodded, and the flower in her hand started floating._

“ _You’re doing great!”_

_She smiled._

  
  


The memory stopped, and faded into another one.

  
  


“ _FREAK!”, Petunia shouted. Vernon grabbed me and held me against the wall. He looked blurred, because he had just hit the glasses off my face._

  
  


Another fade.

  
  


_I and Hermione were back in the forest, sitting on a picnic blanket, reading._

_Hermione looked up from her book. “I think I’d want to go to Gryffindor. All the best wizards come from there.”_

_I answered: “That’d fit you. Or maybe Ravenclaw? They do have a reputation for books.”_

“ _Which House do you think you’ll be?”_

“ _I don’t think it’d be Hufflepuff. Too lazy. Whenever I’m faced with hard work, I look for shortcuts. I don’t feel like I’m particularly brave, I’d prefer to avoid trouble if possible. Find ways around. Maybe that counts as cunning?”_

“ _So, Slytherin? That house sounds terrible!”_

“ _Yeah, true. The whole pureblood supremacy stuff is awful.”_

“ _So, you’d prefer Ravenclaw?”_

“ _I’m not brave and too lazy, so I think I’m either Slytherin or Ravenclaw. You’re either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. How about we both do our best to convince the Sorting Hat to put us into Ravenclaw?”_

“ _Good idea. Then we can be in the same house!”_

“ _Imagine if we had to spend all our time at school separated from each other just because some piece of clothing said so. That’d be pretty annoying, right?”_

  
  


The Legilimency attack stopped, and we were back in Snape’s office, for my first proper Occlumency lesson.

“Your Occlumency is halfway-decent for a beginner, Potter, but don’t think that just because you have basic barriers in place you can protect your mind from everyone. It only took me seconds to get at one of your memories.”

“Did you see much?”, I asked.

He was still for a few seconds, as if deep in thought about a past that could have happened.

“Yes. Several memories of your childhood. Which demonstrates that you still need a lot of practice.”

“And did you notice anything… off?”

“What do you mean?”

It actually worked!

“It means I won! You got through my primary barrier, but that one was only supposed to stop subtle attacks and to allow communication. Behind that I have a lot of random, unimportant memories and several ‘rooms’ of memories behind other barriers. One of them is the training room I use when Hermione and I train our Legilimency, one contains private but not too important memories, another one with stronger defenses containing everything related to Voldemort and the Order, and so on.”

That seemed to surprise Snape a bit. “I did not notice any advanced structures.”

“Well, you would have, after a few moments, unfortunately they aren’t yet that well disguised. One thing I hope you can help me improve. What I did have was a very simple active defense, basically I set my mind to hit you with a memory that I designed to surprise you and cause you to stop the attack. That trick obviously only works once, but it did work!”

“What do you mean, designed?”

“Remus told me quite a lot about what Lily told him about you. Take a look.”

I pushed a memory in front of my primary barriers, and his eyes widened as he read it.

  
  


“ _..That’d be pretty annoying, right?”_

_Hermione laughed._ “ _Annoying? That’s quite an understatement!._ ”

_I briefly paused, and dropped the act. “CUT! I think this take was quite good.”_

“ _Okay, should we do another scene?”_

_I shook my head, and around us the forest clearing disappeared. Grass turned into a solid stone floor, the nearby trees shrunk into the ground, revealing that the rest of the forest had been a painting on the walls, which faded away. The walls moved closer as the Room of Requirement turned back into a simple classroom._

“ _Enough for today. But we should think of possible scenes that could surprise Voldemort, just in case. I think the one with the asteroid isn’t quite good enough.”_

  
  


“That memory was _fake?_ ”, Snape yelled.

“Not quite, the part with Petunia was real. The rest happened in a similar fashion, but we re-enacted it to maximize parallels.”

“You designed it, on purpose, to make it look like you and Granger were similar to… to Lily and me!”

I nodded. “I originally intended to use the memory to manipulate you into trusting me more, but since we’re already getting along pretty well I decided to inform you of its true nature.”

Snape laughed. “You’re a real evil bastard, Potter.. You _would_ have been a good Slytherin. Although you did have a very good reason to avoid it.”

I decided to take that as a compliment.

“I think we should finish for today,” Snape said after a short pause. “Since you’re a bit further along than I anticipated I will have to revise my lesson plans to include active defenses.”

“Okay.” I got up and walked to the door, then remembered something and stopped. “There’s one more thing, though. During last week’s Order meeting, Dumbledore mentioned that you’d still be our spy?”

“If the Dark Lord gathers his followers again, I will have to resume that role.”

“Isn’t that a bit risky? You did attack his mind, after all. The whole double agent thing might not work after that.”

“I was in disguise and he only got a short look at me even then. He should also not recognize me by my mind, as my own Occlumency is quite a bit more advanced than yours and I have different personas that I use in different situations. If he managed to scan his attackers, he’d have seen me as a completely different person.”

“It’s still dangerous.”

“I am well aware of the fact, Potter. Fighting the Dark Lord always is.”

I took a ballpoint pen from my pocket and gave it to Snape. “Take this. It might help you if you’re discovered.”

He examined it. “A muggle pen?”

I nodded. “A slightly enchanted one. It works normally if you click it once or twice, but if you click it three times in less than a second then you’ll have exactly five seconds before it goes off.”

“Goes off?”

“It mixes two potions, which causes it to explode with a bright flash and a really loud bang. No serious damage, but it should be a good distraction.”

Snape looked at the pen for a few seconds, and asked: “Potter, did you by any chance watch too many muggle spy movies?”

“Kinda. Back during the Christmas holidays I had Fred and George visiting, and we spent some time at Hermione’s place with some rented movies from Blockbuster. We were watching some James Bond films and the twins loved the gadgets. I suggested they try to build one themselves, and they created this. Their version was meant as a harmless prank item, so I modified it a little by increasing the amount of explosive potion. Took some time of trial and error to figure out at which point a shield charm would recognize the noise as a danger and block it, but this one should be just below that.”

Snape sighed.

“Fred and George Weasley. Of course. Why are you associating with those troublemakers?”

“Because with the right guidance they could give our enemy a lot of trouble. Guiding them is a little difficult since I haven’t told them what we’re really doing. Professor Dumbledore asked me to not spread it around too much.”

Eventually I’ll have to tell them though. The twins are so good at coming up with things, I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few years we’ll have more Checkhov’s guns than we’ll ever get to fire.

**AN: You leave the firing up to me...**

  
  
  



	23. It’s not brain surgery, is it?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exams are coming, and several secret projects are revealed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Wow it’s been long since the last update! I started writing this chapter all the way back in August, but then I couldn’t get anything done during vacation, then prep for exams, then Corona stress. Every time I got some time for writing I didn’t really know how to continue where I left off, so I ended up rewriting the entire chapter. Also there’s a slight error on my part: Turns out Terry isn’t actually a muggleborn Star Wars fan in canon. He is here. Should I add a time travel plot later on that accidentally causes this discrepancy? 

Homework, organize supplies for a vigilante group, classes, plan for emergencies, homework, refresh my knowledge of muggle science, classes, asking Moody for dueling training, homework, exchange letters with Nicholas Flamel about cutting-edge subatomic alchemy, classes, discuss rumors about the Dark Lord’s return going around Knockturn Alley, homework, keep an eye on Draco Malfoy, classes, participate in the Hogwarts dueling club, homework, work on my hobby project with Fred and George, homework, occlumency lessons, classes, help Lockhart not make an idiot of himself teaching Defense, homework, try to make sense of the mess that is the Hogwarts budget, classes…

And the entire time I’ve had this nagging feeling that I’ve forgotten about something important.

“Hey, you look really tired. Did you stay up all night studying for the exams too?”, asked Lisa Turpin as we made our way down the stairs to breakfast.

Ah, right. Exams.

“No, I haven’t done anything for the exams yet.”

Lisa almost stumbled. “You’re kidding. We’ve got one week left. I’ve been studying since May.”

“No. Honestly, I don’t think I’m going to do any studying for the exams at all.”

Terry must’ve overheard that, because he touched my forehead to feel my temperature and asked only half-jokingly whether he should take me to the hospital wing.

Word spread between the other Ravenclaws in our group. When we arrived in the Great Hall, Terry sat down next to Michael Corner and asked:

“Do you know if the Sorting Hat gives refunds? I think the Harry it gave us might be a bit defective.”

Thanks a lot. Just because I don’t care much about first-year exam grades.

“I’m not sick or crazy,” I decided to defend myself. “I paid attention in class throughout the year. I should know enough to get a passing grade, easy.”

Hermione had gone to breakfast a few minutes earlier so she just now heard about my controversial statement. “Is that all you care about? A passing grade? Really?”

“It’s a first year grade, not a N.E.W.T.! Who’s ever going to care about it? The thing is, if you cram like crazy in a short timespan before an exam, you’ll know it during the test, but forget it all the day after. So I’d rather have a low grade that tells me something about how much I really know than a perfect grade that gives me no useful data.”

“So what, you think studying before exams is bad?”

“Yeah. If the exam is an experiment to measure my knowledge, cramming is just fudging data to get a desired result. Not really the scientific method.”

Hermione nodded. “Of course you’d think of it that way.”

Also a great excuse to spend my time doing other things. Although while it’s a good habit concerning proper experimental procedure, it’s a terrible habit to have once you get exams where the grade is actually meaningful…

Truth is, I never really got around to learn how to properly study for a test. I wonder if I’d not ended up in here, how would my school graduation grades look like?

**AN: Did you really have to bring that up?**

-HP-HP-HP-

Fred and George cast shield charms. 

I said “Three - Two - One - Go!”,  _ pulled _ and wandlessly flipped a small lever on the other side of the (very large this time) Room of Requirement.

In a matter of seconds, the mess of transfigured brass tubes held together by spellotape and bubblegum that we’d spent the last few weeks building came to life. 

The sound of water sizzling. A wheel started spinning, first slowly then faster and faster. Steam escaping from imperfectly closed gaps.

Then,  **WHAM!** , and all three of us were very happy to have cast shield charms as the air was suddenly full of drops of boiling-hot water, shrapnels of brass and glass shards flying off the test stand.

Fred was the first to point out the obvious. “Ouch. That doesn’t look good.”

“It’s just a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly. Was to be expected. It’ll take a while to get it right”, I replied. “If it works, it’ll be so worth it, trust me on that.” 

George seemed less than convinced as he inspected the wreckage, but his objections were interrupted by Ron arriving.

“Sorry I’m late, you won’t believe what happened today… Bollocks. What happened here?”

I answered: “We didn’t know where you were, so we went ahead with the test. Didn’t go as well as we hoped. But it’s not as bad as it looks, I think most of it can be repaired. We’ll need a new bottle, but that’s no problem.”

“What I want to know is what our little Ronniekins was up to to miss our big day”, Fred asked.

“You’d never guess it. Neville Longbottom of all people dragged me off after charms class. He knew a tunnel out of the castle and we went to Diagon. He bought me a new wand, look..”

………

How.

The.

FUCK.

Did.

I.

Forget.

That.

……..

Seriously. How did I remember the tiny detail of Neville having a mismatched wand but completely forget that Ron Weasley, one of the MAIN CHARACTERS, had the exact same issue?

What other really important detail could I have forgotten?

My confidence of winning this thing just dropped by roughly 38%.

-HP-HP-HP-

Maybe I should worry more about grades. I mean, I spent two years before Hogwarts already learning and preparing, but with how leaky my memory apparently is and with how busy I am right now… It’s 1 in the morning, I really should be getting some sleep, but I can’t skip today’s Order meeting and for some reason they had to put it on a Tuesday.

“..and finally, fifty more doses of Skele-Grow.”, Snape finished his list of potions he’d brewed.

Sirius clapped. “Great! Now that we’re done with the boring stuff, I’ve got a bit of an announcement to make! Tomorrow is the Summer Equinox Wizengamot Session!”

“Ah, yes”, Snape answered. “The Equinox Session is on the equinox. What an incredibly thoughtful observation.”

Luckily, Dumbledore interrupted Snape and Sirius before it could get worse. “What Sirius wanted to tell us is that we have achieved a significant breakthrough on the political side. Given the number of individuals we suspect of ties to Voldemort who have managed to gain significant power in our government, I found it necessary to arrange it so the seat of the late Mister Bole would be granted to someone from our group. Someone to whom the Ministry owes a significant debt.”

Snape’s jaw dropped. So did mine. And pretty much everyone else’s.

“No!”

“What?”

“Sirius Black on the Wizengamot?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“It’s true”, Sirius said. “It wasn’t really our idea. I just mentioned that I currently don’t have anything to do. Didn’t expect that kind of job, but I’ll gladly do it. Beats patrolling Knockturn.”

Then Arthur Weasley spoke up: “Once you’re sworn in and everything, could you maybe help me a little bit? I’m working on a new bill together with Thornbury and Krepp. Muggle Protection Act. It’s supposed to help against muggle-baiting.”

“Sure, why not?”

I decided to preemptively prevent some trouble. “You know, if you’re already going for a major re-write to the laws regarding muggle artefacts, maybe you could find a spell that detects if there’s a magical person nearby and require all enchanted muggle artefacts to have it? That way you could, let’s say, completely hypothetically, have a perfectly legal magic flying car, where if it somehow ends up in muggle hands all the enchantments become inert?”

After the rest of the Order kindly interrupted our ongoing discussion on the technical details and potential wartime applications of flying invisible vehicles and returned to normal boring talk about securing potion ingredient supplies, Remus - sitting next to me - quietly asked if we should best Sirius’s announcement with his project.

I didn’t want to reveal that until it was done, but ok. We can finish it later.

“There’s another thing we got,” Remus announced. “Over the past few months, every full moon I’ve portkeyed with the British Lycanthropy Association to the other side of the world to avoid transformation. I didn’t want to be useless, so I was busy over there. Long story short, we got another secret base, pretty much as far away from here as possible.”

“So that’s what you did with those tents?”, Sirius replied. “Built a secret base?”

“In a worst-case scenario, if nowhere in the country is safe and we need a place to regroup, it’d be useful. So far it’s ten enlarged tents in the middle of nowhere, hidden from muggles and with some other spells to avoid detection. We could stash some supplies there, maybe add a Fidelius if we can find another trustworthy secret keeper.”

Snape didn’t seem impressed. “So, you built a campground. On the other side of the world. Would you mind telling us how we are supposed to get there?”

“Oh, that’s actually not a problem.” Remus got some small credit card shaped objects from his bag. “The BLA gets top range portkeys at a discount price. I got the destination modified on a few of them.”

Not exactly perfectly legal, but modifying an existing portkey is surprisingly easy compared to making one, especially when the destination is in roughly the same area.

Dedalus Diggle examined one of the portkeys and grew concerned as he noticed the picture of Uluru on it. “Don’t tell me you put it in the Outback.”

“No, of course not,” I replied. “It’s in New Zealand. Pretty close to the location the werewolves use. The design was my idea, a distraction. We need to add an identifier charm so each portkey can only be used by one of us, but in case one falls into enemy hands, they might still be able to analyze the magic to figure out the rough location. Given how far it is they’d probably be off by thousands of kilometers, and the logo might get them to start looking for us on the wrong continent.”

Plus it’d be some extra deterrent to prevent Voldemort from searching for it. 

Small history lesson, back in the late 1600s the first european muggle expedition to set foot in Australia got into a bit of a fight with some natives, and one of them happened to be a wizard who scared the invaders away. Today that’d be a minor secrecy violation that obliviators would fix in a matter of minutes, but the incident had the bad luck to be one of the first secrecy incidents after the law had been put into effect. Back in Europe, the magical governments that had just gotten finished with the logistical nightmare of erasing all evidence of magic from the muggle world freaked out when they heard about the incident, and completely overreacted by sending a small army to Australia to deal with it. The sad end result of the Australian Secrecy War was several hundred casualties, including the muggle expedition which was completely erased from the muggle history books, and it left the magical world with extremely strained relations with the Aboriginal wizards. Really understandable, if a law that a bunch of British wizards came up with banned you from helping your nonmagical folks who got mistreated by British criminals, you’d be angry too.

Long story short, British wizards in combat robes wouldn’t be very welcome in the middle of the Australian Outback, regardless of whether they’d be Order members hiding or Death Eaters looking for us.

Meanwhile in New Zealand it was almost the exact opposite. About a century later and with a lot more experience in dealing with secrecy issues, Maori and British wizards got along pretty okay, and today the international relations are so good that we can portkey in a dozen werewolves on a full moon. Couldn’t do that in most other countries. It’s actually a bit of a problem for werewolves in countries that aren’t on good terms with another place on the other side of the planet.

-HP-HP-HP-

“Hey, can we ask what you’re up to?”, Terry asked as we were leaving Transfiguration.

Huh? “What do you mean?”

Lisa replied: “Come on, you’re sneaking away all the time. You’re almost never in the common room. Nor in the library.”

“I’m sure if he wants you to know he’ll tell you,” Hermione interjected.

“Okay, you got me. I’ll admit it, I’ve been busy with a secret project.”

Hermione looked at me questioningly. “ _ I don’t think you’re supposed to tell them about your beating Voldemort thing, right? The Order? _ ”

“ _ True, but I do have another thing going on. A bit of a hobby. Probably should have told you. _ ”

Now I had three very interested classmates, so we went to the Room where Fred and George were busy transfiguring a complicated brass part. After quick hellos they went back to their work and the Ravenclaws looked around.

“Nice place you’ve got here”, Lisa remarked, completely oblivious to how awesome the Room really was.

“Yeah, I’d greatly appreciate it if you could not tell the entire school about our lab.”

Hermione inspected the many parts and items strewn across the floor and the shelves. “Are you building some kind of muggle machine? I thought technology doesn’t work here?”

“Electronics don’t. Mechanics do.” And our project is pure steampunk.

“What is this thing?”, Terry asked about the big brass piece in the center of the room.

“Okay, I think it’s best if I explain from the basics. Do you know what this is?”, I asked while taking a bottle from a shelf.

Hermione recognized it. “That’s your self-refilling water bottle, that you got for Christmas?”

“Almost. That original one got rapidly deconstructed a few weeks ago. We got a bunch of replacements from the same store.”

I put the bottle back and removed a small metal tube from the brass assembly.

“What’s that?”

I opened a drawer, took out some glasses and a dark bottle and drank a bit of the potion. “For safety reason, it’s better if you drink this before I demonstrate.”

Terry recognized something. “Is this some sort of fire resistance potion?”

“Exactly. A very specific one.”

After making sure everyone had a dose, I took the metal tube and touched it with my wand. Immediately a pitch-black flame the size of a bunsen burner flame erupted from the tube.

“Schwarzflamm torch”, I explained. ”I asked Snape, he got Professor Babbling to make it for me. Doesn’t radiate light, but it’s really hot. If you touched the flame without the potion your finger would be vaporized in a fraction of a second.”

“Wow.”

“How did you get  _ Snape  _ to give you that?”

Lisa guessed where I was going. “So you’ve got a source of water and heat. You’re making something steam powered? Like the Express?”

“Correct. Ten billion points for you. This thing will have several bottles as propellant sources. This part here that looks like a car’s turbo, because it is based on a car’s turbo we got from a scrapyard and modified, is actually a water pump. The water goes through these tubes into the boiler chamber. Here the stream should hit the torch and instantly get turned to steam. Some of that steam goes through the tap-off and into this turbine, which drives the pump. The rest goes through this throat section, then out this nozzle which should theoretically turn the pressure and temperature into velocity.”

Even though Hermione should’ve known me pretty well at this point, she was still pretty surprised at the realization. “You’re building a rocket engine.”

“Bingo. A water monopropellant thaumothermal engine with a hot bleed cycle turbopump. Basically the same design as the NERVA, but we replaced the nuclear reactor with the magic fire.”

“And what do you want to do with a ROCKET ENGINE?”

At this point Fred and George had stopped transfiguring the replacement turbine parts and joined the conversation. “We’re going to make the world’s fastest broom.” “The original plan was to put something like a muggle firework on one but Harry then decided against that.”

I nodded. “Solid rockets are simple, but you can’t control them very much, they have limited fuel and I don’t trust them at all. After the Challenger, you’d have to have way too many letters in your initials to think that strapping a SRB to a broomstick would be a good idea.”

Hermione asked: “So after correctly figuring out that riding on a solid rocket would be a terrible idea, your first thought was ‘let’s build a liquid rocket’?”

“That’s pretty much what happened”, George said. “And with the conjured water, we don’t have to worry about fuel. The sea is the limit!”

“Why would the sea be the limit? Does it not work over water?”, Terry asked.

“I don’t know. That’s just something Harry said all the time.”

“Not the sea,” I clarified. “Given the constant thrust of the engine, the theoretical limit of velocity as t goes to infinity is  _ c _ . Now that should break some records.”

-HP-HP-HP-

I looked at her with pleading eyes, desperate for help. “ _ Hey, can you please tell me the name of that Goblin king from the 1347 war? _ ”

“ _ I’m sorry, Harry, but I’m afraid I can’t do that. This exam is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it. _ ”

…I really should’ve studied more.


End file.
